Increasing the tipped minimum wage means that restaurants will add that cost to the menu. Because tips are based a percentage of your order, this means that customers actually pay more money in tips, even though these laws are marketed as reducing the need for tips.
Yet places with higher minimum wages don't always have higher burger prices at McDonald's.
And places with enforcement of minumum wages and no tips don't always have higher prices for food.
A very real alternative to your proposal is that market pressure could force prices down and eat into owner's profit. Market forces seem to be what controls the prices most places you can get food with and without tips.
I think (hope) the expectation is to eventually increase wages and prices and phase out tips altogether. Tip culture has gone insane...even my home inspector's last invoice has a tip line!
Absolutely. The article in question is about how it runs counter to increasing said wages instead, and the comment I'm replying to I think is saying if we raise wages tips will raise. Which is true, short term.
I mean, wages have been increasing. Legislated wages are a vanishingly small portion of earned wages, except in the states with the highest minimum wages relative to market rates (and then usually only in the least-developed areas in those states, which is also where those legislated wages are likely to cause unemployment).
Minimum wage is already $20/hr where I live. Tips can approximately double that. There is no version of the world where employees will willing give up those tips and no restaurant can afford a $40/hr minimum wage.
This is just a one-way ratchet on employment costs, not a plausible way to eliminate tipping.
Of course they can: increase prices accordingly (I'm not commenting on what a reasonable wage for serving is, just that tipping is a bad way to get to that wage).
It's not like customers don't have to consider the cost of the mandatory tipping bullshit when you consider where to eat and whether you can afford it in any case.
There are several states that already don't have a separate tipped minimum wage, including California, and they all have restaurants that operate just fine. The rest of the world does not have tipped minimum wages, and very little tipping culture compared to the US and they also manage to have restaurants that people can afford.
There should be some sort of cap on tips. My friends and I went our for dinner last weekend and we ended up spending around $600 for dinner, there were 5 of us. They automatically added 20% , $120 as a tip. We spent about 2 hours at that restaurant. I wouldn't say service was spectacular. The server infact made us over order, everyone had to take boxes back, they messed up 2 of our courses, but we had no recourse.
> these laws are marketed as reducing the need for tips.
One of the presidential candidates gave a speech recently with a back drop that said “no taxes on tips” or something.
That did nothing for me in terms of thinking meals would be cheaper. I assume they’re marketing the idea to restaurant workers directly rather than patrons.
