Working For Tips

There is presently a lot of heated social conversation about people who traditionally receive tips as part of their pay for work – namely those in the restaurant-bar, hotel, taxi-limousine, beauty service and travel service industries. They legally receive what’s known as a sub-minimum wage (apx. $5.00/hour) from their employers, because their tips, supposedly, bring them up to a living wage. That wasn’t true 30 or 40 years ago and it’s even worse now. That’s because more and more Americans, either out of ignorance or cheapness, are leaving smaller and fewer tips. So the question is: should the sub-minimum wage be increased? Would it surprise you to know that many Americans are saying no?

Tipping is a uniquely American custom, something Americans traveling abroad are delighted to discover and foreigners visiting here often learn to their embarrassment the first time they stiff a waiter or cab driver. There’s an irony here, since it appears that tipping began in the 1600s in England when men drinking in taverns gave money to servers “to insure promptitude” or T.I.P for short.

When the practice started to make its way into American bars and restaurants in the late 1890s, a movement against it rose up. Many Americans felt it was in opposition to the country’s ideals of class equality and would lead to the development of a “servile class” that would be rendered financially dependent on the rich. But the custom persisted – and grew – here, nonetheless.

Over time, tipping somehow went out of favor (in some instances out of legality) in Europe, and indeed created that “servile class” in America – which has never been a classless society, despite our delusions to the contrary. This explains why many Americans resent tipping and/or look down on people who work for tips and/or are ashamed to work in jobs that receive tips.

I was the daughter of a man who spent most of his working life first as a waiter and then as a skycap. He worked for tips. He worked very hard and put up with an assortment of indignities, but still never made enough to support a family, which is why my mother worked in the 1950s when most women were still housewives.

She worked until the 1980s, pouring her considerable intelligence into the bottomless, low-paying well of the pink ghetto, first as a bookkeeper, then as a comptroller, and finally as the manager of the subscription department of an elite specialty business newspaper – where she signed her letters “L. Browne,” lest the high-powered male subscribers suspect she was a woman. And meanwhile, my black father smiled as he allowed white people to rub his head for luck in the hope it would earn him a larger tip.

Since Ronald Reagan (whom I still blame for everything), America has been creating an economy and social mindset guided by millionaire Republican belief that the population is made up of Makers and Takers, an idea that middle class and working class Republicans buy into. That’s why so many people still think that teenagers are the ones working minimum-wage jobs, when the truth is, most teens can’t find jobs because the jobs they used to have are now held by adults trying to make a living and support their families. People working for tips are also doing the same thing.

In case you haven’t noticed, unless you (or you and your partner/spouse, if you have one) are bringing in a six-figure salary, nothing in America is affordable, anywhere – not housing, utilities, food, gas, a night at the movies, nothing – except clothing, house wares, and the smart electronic devices everyone loves so much, all of which are sold cheap because they’re made by indentured and child labor through the American “job creators” who are actually outsourcing those jobs to Third World countries. Welcome to the 21^st century. 

It’s time to raise the minimum wage and the sub-minimum wage, federally. And it’s time for Americans who eat in American restaurants, stay in American hotels, ride in American taxis – etc. – to ante up and leave a decent 15-20% tip.  You’re not tipping for extraordinarily wonderful service, you’re tipping because that’s what we do here. It’s the American way.

Class Warfare 2

I got two emails about my first post on the need to fight back hard against the class warfare being waged by the Right. One came from a Conservative friend who is by no means a rich man but is very, very concerned about the economy and our national debt and deficit, and believes that if you push the rich too hard they’ll go away, and jobs and the very underpinnings of our economy will disappear. It seemed that all he got from that post was that I was advocating for higher taxes on the rich. The other came from a Liberal friend who said he and his wife had been politically active for decades, often to no avail and frequently suffering harsh and ridiculous response from within the ranks, which is why he’s now a burnt-out recluse and won’t do much anymore.

While I am all for increasing taxes on the rich (not the 80%-90% it was during the Eisenhower years, but a healthy 30% they can’t avoid through tax loopholes, hiding their money offshore, or special privilege), higher taxes on the rich wasn’t all I had in mind. And, I too was more politically active for decades than I am now, and learned that victories are often minimal and your “friends” can be really annoying, short-sighted, easily distracted, rigid and hostile. Trying to organize the Left is like trying to corral a bunch of smart kids suffering from ADD wandering around a large room.

So let me get to the guts of this hopefully more explanatory post by saying this: class warfare – which, ironically, the rich usually accuse the poor of initiating with their commie-inspired protests and other carrying on – is not just about money. It’s about a combination of economic fairness, social justice, how we view each other, and how we view the role and responsibility of government. We, the 97% who are struggling, for the most part see things differently than do the 3% who are very rich. Politically, the 97% isn’t united. What we have in common is that we’re all having a very hard time – a situation created by the 3%. Which is why, God help us, we have to try to get together and push back.

Now nearly every member of Congress and the Senate is a millionaire to one degree or another, and both bodies are largely white and male, all of which makes it difficult for them to understand the plights of ordinary people. Add to this the impact of the demented Tea Party, whose original concerns were economic (like my Conservative friend), but which came to include social issues over time with positions based in Christian Fundamentalism. Their strident über conservatism completed the co-opting of the Republican party that began when the sanctified Ronald Reagan said our national problems weren’t about dysfunction in government, the problem was government itself. Then Wall Street collapsed and America elected a Black president who intended to use progressive approaches to financial and social issues and all hell broke loose.

When the people who run government don’t believe in government, government doesn’t run well. When government is run by people with money, privilege and power, government will not make policy that creates/provides economic fairness and social justice. When you throw religious ideas into the mix, which have no place in government to begin with, you end up with wildly unbalanced economics, a huge lack of social justice, and very twisted views of one another and the role and responsibility of government. In other words, you end up where we are now.

The Right is telling us that the rich are job creators and the poor have brought their problems on themselves, neither of which is true. They also tell us that unrestricted free-market capitalism is the best and only way to go, which it isn’t. They say it isn’t government’s responsibility to help us, which it is. And their primary goal is to generate profit from everything and to maintain a massively expensive and totally unexamined system of military defense, which is insane. They say government should be small, when what it should be is efficient, regardless of its size.

They say government should not intrude into people’s personal lives, except when it comes to women having control over their own bodies and people having the right to love and marry who they choose, even if they’re of the same sex. They say racism no longer exists, which is a lie; that science is wrong about everything, which is religion talking; and that government can’t afford to pay for things like healthcare, social services, education, infrastructure repair, or to fight poverty and hunger – all of which is precisely what government should spend its money on.

The Left is speaking out against all this, but not very loudly and not in a unified voice. Which is why government is getting nowhere – or moving in the exactly opposite and wrong direction – when it comes to major reforms in tax policy, immigration, unemployment/job creation, the role of money in electoral politics, voter suppression, gun policy, economic gender inequities, environmental protection, the better understanding and use of new technology, creative and enlightened foreign policy, prison policy, drug policy, and all the other things mentioned in the paragraph above. These are the reasons we’re already engaged in class warfare and why we have to fight back harder and better. Nothing less than our survival – individually, as a people, and as a country – is at stake. I hope I’ve made my argument clearer.

Republicans, Reclaim Your Souls

Until fairly recently, we had a vibrant two-party system in this country.  Yes, Democrats and Republicans have always had significant differences in preferred practices and policies.  But the Republican Party has gone from being fiscally and otherwise conservative, but still willing to compromise with Democrats to create laws and programs that serve the public and national good, to functioning as a barrier to compromise, civility and common sense.

There are currently numerous older and previous members of both houses who have been speaking publicly about the “old days,” when Republicans and Democrats socialized together and there were members from opposite sides who were nonetheless good friends.  It may have been the day of smoke-filled back rooms, but it was also the day of camaraderie, decency and some shared goals.

Now, it’s a whole new ballgame.  Both on and off the floor, Democrats and Republicans stay in their segregated groups.  They have become more than just partisan.  They are no longer two different teams playing the same game by principled rules.  This is largely because the Republican Party has been kidnapped by the Tea Party, a disruptive, ill-informed, right-wing-extremist fringe group.  And, it’s important to note that the Tea Party in general criticizes the Republicans for not being conservative enough.

The Tea Party has become a well-oiled political machine and a powerful lobby for a large number of assorted ordinary folks who believe in honoring the success and excess of the rich; who value religion over science; who champion free markets in all things, regardless of any negative impact on society; who prefer rogue capitalism and the profit-motive to social service and compassion; who so want to revive the past that they will not acknowledge the obvious differences and imperatives of the future; and, most of all, who think that their beliefs should be the law of the land – even if they’re contrary to the separation of church and state.  Indeed, the Tea Party will not accept secular law that is in conflict with its values, even though a majority of Americans do not share those values.

As a result (as we’ve all noticed), the Republican Party is in a hyper state of Stockholm Syndrome – the dynamic that occurs when a kidnap victim is held by charismatic captors for so long that they begin to identify with their captors and defend them against the people from their “prior” lives who are trying to free them.

It is time for all Republicans – politicians and citizens alike – to stand up to the Tea Party, which is taking them down a wrong, dangerous road.  Whatever their personal religious beliefs may be, Republicans must renew their faith in the wisdom of secular government as mandated by the Constitution in America  – a country that abounds in differences of faith and opinion and prides itself on its diversity.

It’s also time for Republicans to rededicate themselves to governing in the public interest and respecting the office of the Presidency, even if they don’t care for the man who’s currently President.  It’s time for the Republicans to stop combining the doing of their jobs with the campaigning for their jobs.  It is unconscionable to state shamelessly that as a party you will not work with the President and that your primary goal is to bring him down, no matter what he offers and no matter what the consequences may be.

The Republicans have a right – indeed, a duty – to stand by their party’s core principles of belief in small government, low taxes, moderate government spending and, now, the need to address the national debt and deficit.  They do not have a right to be obstructionist, petulant, rigid, indifferent to the welfare of the people, and threatening to the economic health and world standing of the country.

To the great dismay of the Left, President Obama has been more than obliging and cooperative.  He, in fact, is playing loose and easy with the core values of the Democratic Party.  Real Republicans should see this.  It is only because the Republican Party has allowed the Tea Party to threaten its honor, its history, its common sense, and the better angels of its nature, that at this juncture they will not play a fair game.

Reclaim your souls, Republicans.  If you do, you just might win the essence of what you want, as well as the 2012 campaign.  (I don't want you to win, but if you don't get a grip, everyone will lose, big time.)  I urge you to stop buying in to the fear and loathing and ridiculous extremism of the Tea Party.  You are the party of Lincoln and Reagan.  Look at what they did and ask yourself what you should be doing now.