Strazdas said:
Save for rent, its not that different. in fact you get many things, like Gasoline, way cheaper. we laugh when you cry about gasoline prices rising. we already got double that.
Hardly. I cant speak for everyone, but i noticed a lot of americans like to waste money. I once had to prove somone you can live off of 1000 dollars a month. seriuosly.....
And americans drive many times the amount the average european does, therefore rendering the idea that the gas is cheaper pointless when they still have to pay a few times the amount total over an equal period of time simply because the lack of alternatives in order to commute the longer distances to work.
$4.50 an hour amounts to about $750 a month, if they can even gain 40 hours a week(something that is rare in the service industry since without that timetable, it allows companies some loopholes to pay them less in the first place). So yeah, care to show me how someone can survive with, oh, lets be generous here, $500 dollars a month based on a single service industry job making about 30 hours or so. Also, where were you taking into account rent and food, as they are regionally priced many times, even among the states themselves. But please, go on and lecture the poor about how they don't know how to be poor, I am sure that wont come off as horribly patronizing or anything.
I do not doubt that people can survive off of that, but that is frequently terrible existence, often far worse when you take into account that if you are working a service job as an only source of income and have to commute any distance, as the money you make goes into the tank more often then not. Oh, and lets not forget the pattern of single parents having to take lower income jobs, such as service industry, due to lack of schooling or simply no other options and the added financial burdens that brings with it.
Strazdas said:
I blame the ones that pay bellow minimum wage.
Waitstaff DOES have a say. they dont say anything though. becasue you have a shitty system that they are using, because shitty costumers tip any service, thus thep ropblem persists.
They HAVE means of forcing it to employer. Resue to work bellwo minimum wage. if you have enough waitstaff doing this, the emplyer will ahve no choice but to agree or go under. People who accept to work for such wage really just say that its ok to dont pay them enough to live by.
ALL system changes came bottom up. because top is happy with currrent system, it lets them be on top after all. it will NEVER come from top down.
If the price was higher and there would be no tips, that would be a viable solution, instead of false advertisement and robbery.
You blame the system but accuse the people with no other option of not doing something? Bet you were all confused about why the slaves didn't just revolt too, weren't you? I mean, they outnumber the owners, right? Or why the demand for equal rights wasn't enough for the minorities. Changes can happen, but there is often a requirement for some larger pressure to force the change in the first place. As with many, this would have to be a government pressure, as few businesses will do it to themselves when it cuts into profits.
People need money to survive, to raise their kids and to simply exist in any form. There is a lot more people looking for jobs then there are jobs available. SOMEONE will take your job if you try to protest your working conditions, and even if you could get all the working poor Americans to do so, I recall the States having issues of immigration and illegals being hired because they work for even less. Your method does not work when there is competition for your job as it is. And unlike the auto industry, most service jobs can not even form unions because there is no skill set required to work there in the first place that would slow replacement, no stability in the job to maintain connections and grow a union framework from, and too many people with no other option who will therefore compromise for the sake of survival.
The system now practically requires a fix from government enforcement. What you are proposing is that the market will fix itself if people just all worked towards it, yet you ignore the fundamentals of supply and demand that help cause this problem in the first place. There are more supply for jobs, then demand, thus price (wages) go down because they can get away with it. People will compromise their dignity to survive or to help their families survive and will accept lower wages and bad conditions, as they always have when the businesses offer them because there is no other way for those people to get by on average. And much like how it took government action to enforce things like basic safety and working conditions in the first place, so too would it be required to change a greedy business. Ground up does not work with the working poor because they have to worry about survival first, and it is better to scrape an existence and get by then starve based on your ideals, all the more true with it is your family starving because of them.
You are naive and now come off as condescending too.
) and tips there are fairly scarce. They're often times simply 'keep the change' tips, which is normally about 10-to-30 pence. I once got a £5 tip one night just because the guy felt like it (his order came to £5, he paid with a £20 and told me to keep a fiver, was loving it) but as a fairly regular looking bloke (i.e. not a female bartender who the guys want to get off with) I don't get tipped that often. But that's fine really, the tips are all kept together and are shared out at the end of the night anyway (£1.70 tonight), which makes it a bit fairer, but that's not where our money mainly comes from, because we obviously get paid for working there.