In the past, when there was a much higher tax on high income earners, instead of paying more in taxes, they would spread the wealth a little more equitably. This was true in Hollywood, in corporations, hell, in working service industry jobs. There were still rich, but so were others. In the past 40 years, we have been experiencing the greatest wealth transfer (over $50 fucking trillion ) from the working class to the 1% ever. And it’s poised to get worse. Anyone who doesn’t support unions and a strongly progressive tax is either ignorant of the history of the US, or an asshole. There is no in between.
Lobbying is an important and necessary government function. The Americans with Disabilities Act is the greatest success of social lobbying in history.
Unlimited dark money corporate lobbying used to be illegal and needs to be illegal again. And we need to get the regulatory capture pipeline under control somehow. Being able to leave government agencies for lucrative positions at corporations you were supposed to be regulating is the biggest problem after unlimited dark money for campaigns.
Half the food service workers are paid in tips. Which is a giant and very effective bandaid to the issue.
The reality is, the income is pretty good for most tipped food service work. Better than in most comparable jobs. The bosses taking themselves out of the equation makes the effective wages pretty decent, even if it feels pretty ugly for everyone else. There's a huge anti-tip movement growing... maybe that's the 4D chess. Get rid of all the tips to ensure food service workers get paid absolute crap just like everyone else so that they show a bit more solidarity with other jobs. But really, it's probably just people who want to pay less and haven't 100% thought through the counterfactual of how the world without tips will look for the workers, absent fixing the fundamental issues of wage society as they currently exist first. Tips work out in practice to revenue sharing. Until wage laws include some amount of mandatory revenue sharing to workers (which they absolutely should for so many reasons), getting rid of tips will hurt the workers.
I'd like to see some regional cookery unions, though. Even in places where the line cook wages aren't that terrible, those are still the worst-treated people in a restaurant. They're treated as totally disposable and interchangeable. They need a union that represents not just the members of any particular store, but disparate stores in a geographic area.
The waitresses said they make the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which is $2.13 per hour. The intention is that the bulk of their income will primarily come from tips. Schoolmeester-Cochran estimated she works anywhere from 21 to 35 hours each week and, with tips, brings in a salary ranging from $70 some weeks to $170 others. <-- Waffle House employee
But the rare places they don't are also places where the alternative is fed min wage -- also unlivable poverty -- , under table submin wage, or no job at all / mlm psychosis.
I get it's unpopular to speak in support of tips. People hate tipping so much. But until we seriously talk about what will replace it, all the demands to ban it are just part of false consciousness. We need to be more honest that most of the antitip culture is not coming from people who want the working class supported. It comes from people who think these workers are being paid too much.
I’m not surprised. There was a tweet from Ed Soloman, one of the writers on Men In Black, some time ago now, showing his yearly statement of residuals on that film.
Despite making almost $600m on a $90m budget and spawning a franchise, he was informed by the statement that the film was a loss for Sony and the studio is still in the red.
At one point he mentions a well known actress making 1/7th the salary of her male co-star, and that she was making just under 4K a week.
So there’s clearly money to go around if the dudes can get 28k a week, and the “shows or movies are losing millions” argument the accountants and tax dealers use makes no sense
Every year, there are actors who had roles in Return of the Jedi, who get letters informing that although their contact entitles them to money that film’s net profit, sadly Return of the Jedi hasn’t made any profit yet!
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