Harris Vows to End Subminimum Wages in Policy Push Before Debate
Harris Vows to End Subminimum Wages in Policy Push Before Debate
Vice President Kamala Harris is pledging to end subminimum wages for tipped workers, widening a push to eliminate taxes on tips as she jockeys with Donald Trump ahead of their first debate Tuesday.
In policy proposals posted to her website, Harris called for an increase in the overall minimum wage and for the end of the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
I dislike the elimination of taxes on tips because it opens a new loophole for rich assholes but I'm 100% behind eliminating sub-minimum wages.
107It does feel like we should be encouraging the end of tipping, not asking it to stick around forever.
102Removing the minimum wage exception to tips does help with that. Part of the reason why tips are inventived
Plus taxes on tips as they exist already has quite a number of assumptions that tipping will always exist. For instance, assumptions of a minimum 8% tip rate for reporting. Which will be withheld from pay from at least that assumption (which you can get back if you earn less by filling)
36I agree, and we'd have to do it carefully so tipped workers continue making roughly the same as they do now.
Where I live a handful of trendy restaurants announced opened as no-tipping restaurants. They would add a 20% gratuity to every bill and claim it was used "to support a living wage and benefits" to the staff. Usually it was just sucked up into the revenue pile and used however the owner wanted.
If restaurants dropped tipping, raised their prices by 20%, and paid their staff 20% more, I would be okay with that. In the European countries I've visited, it seems to work just fine and food is still cheaper than where I live.
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Harris's proposal specifically includes an income limit to prevent people like hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their pay as "tips". Trump's version predictability does not.
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And to clarify, she is also calling for an overall increased minimum wage at the same time
54It won't be enough, it never will, but at least it raises it in the few states that have less than or no minimum. I'm guessing Georgia and Wyoming still have a lesser minimum because it just wasn't worth the effort to change the laws.
16There's a chance they go further and make things better in the longer-term
If dems get the house and maintain the senate, there's a decent chance that some dem reps will take a crack again at tying the minimum wage to inflation. There were proposed bills in the past by dems which would do exactly that
10It won’t be enough, it never will
I'm old enough to remember Obama raising the federal contractor wage to $10.10/hr and conservatives absolutely melting down. Shortly thereafter, we got a slew of state laws that forbade individual cities from raising the minimum wage. And then we got a vicious crackdown on migrant workers, on the grounds that they were "stealing jobs".
I’m guessing Georgia and Wyoming still have a lesser minimum because it just wasn’t worth the effort to change the laws.
Wyoming, in particular, is just warmed over feudalism. You either work for your O&G overlords as roughnecks and earn a better-than-Idaho standard of living or you work in the service sector as the servant class to the out-of-state roughnecks or you just exist as a landless vagabond hoping to survive the next winter.
Plus there are a few thousand bougie failkids living the high life in Jackson Hole on permanent vacation.
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Why do we have to keep fighting for a higher minimum wage? We should just set it at a livable rate then have it automatically adjusted annually based on CPI or a similar economic metric.
5
Cue countless restaurant owners whining and trying to seriously complain that they can’t “compete” without underpaying their employees.
41There's a long tail of servers/bartenders who are against this as well because they work at expensive establishments and make bank off tips. Like high double digits an hour.
If the push to convert tips into wages ever becomes serious, conservative media will do its best to platform and promote these servers who stand to lose income off it. We gotta think of a rhetoric/messaging strategy to counter that.
2
Finally! This drives me crazy. How is it ok to pay less than the minimum? Even if there is a chance they can make more from tips. The tips are a perk of the job not the main funding source. Idk why we let companies get away with this. If you can't afford to pay a living wage you can't afford to be in business.
21"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
-FDR
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This is absolutely horrible! Whatever will be next? 5 weeks paid holiday?!?!
This is un-American, which is why I vote Trump. 🤪😜
/s17crikey! here we have a red capped mole rat and aint it a beaut! this little guy is engaged in its favorite pastime - unconfined rage at the "other" followed by some political self-immolation. we'll leave this one to do its thing and trek on, mate.
edit: poor attempt at channeling the late steve irwin observing a republican voter in its natural habitat. undercooked and will be retired. :-/
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How about we do a maximum wage instead?
11Progressive tax rates
12Wage? Naw. Executive salary and stock compensation? Absolutely
7That doesn't apply to bonuses. Most of these billionaires have salary in the millions and massive "bonuses" based on whatever metrics they want.
This is probably why they want no taxes on tips so they can claim those bonuses tax free.
2"That" doesn't exist - how can you say what this theoretical cap would apply to?
1
Next: move minimum wages in-line to what they would have been had they been locked to productivity gains since 1970.
Hint: $30+/hr.
Better yet: lock minimum wage to being no less than 3× median rent for any one region
8If there are sub-minimum wages, wouldn't they be the minimum wage?
6It’s more of a loophole for jobs like serving that rely on tips. If it was the minimum then all the minimum wage earners would be at server salary.
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Another way to help the service industry would be to make medicinal cocaine (and similar) a tax deductible business expense. It’s a more valid business expense than a programmer buying a third monitor.
Or how about banning the practice of making the bartenders/waitresses tip out the bar back or bus boys when they should all just be getting paid a living wage by their employer. That would also be good for tipped employees.
4That's almost as good as raising the minimum wage. Almost.
3It's raising a minimum wage.
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