Heavy car dependency is making American lives less satisfying, study shows
We are “locked into a system of driving that is meant to be more enjoyable but isn’t."
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America in general is making Americans miserable.
Drive everywhere, media is awful, job is either $12/hr or good money to spend all your day making things worse, people are fake, food is poisoned, plastic is in everything, it all gets more expensive every year to pay people who already have enough, and public space is nonexistent.
Man, fuck this.
I am not from US, so I don't know what the $12/hr is supposed to be. So I went on to check the minimum wage, apparently the federal minimum is $7.25/hr but can be higher per state. OK, but oh boy I found some American-style shit:
The minimum wage for employees who receive tips is $2.13 per hour. The amount of tips plus the $2.13 must reach at least $7.25 per hour. If not, your employer must pay to make up the difference.
The fuck are you calling a "tip" at this point if it just becomes part of the wage and a way for the employer to save some money??
Here's the source: https://www.usa.gov/minimum-wage
I did not pull it out my ass, although it's clearly been pulled out of some.
Also, if you’re mentally disabled, your employer is allowed to pay you less than minimum wage.
USA, whee
Maybe there's some hope: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-labor-department-proposes-nixing-sub-minimum-wage-disabled-workers-2024-12-03/
Dec 3 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a last-minute proposal to eliminate employers' ability to pay less than the minimum wage to certain workers with disabilities.
Now for some awful statistics:
About half of workers earn less than $3.50 per hour, and about 10% are paid $1 an hour or less, according to DOL.
That 10%... you can't even call that pocket money.
Yeah the American tipping system is famously bad. At some restaurants people can really make a lot of money on tips. Some of them people make nearly nothing and really suffer. Most of them people get by and their employer takes it to the bank.
At some restaurants people can really make a lot of money on tips
And at some restaurants the hot yet ditsy server in a miniskirt can really make a lot of money on tips while being slow and getting my order wrong. Meanwhile the person hustling with my food, the person redoing the order the server screwed up do a lot more work to provide good service yet get nothing
Here's the source: https://www.usa.gov/minimum-wage
I did not pull it out my ass, although it's clearly been pulled out of some.
The fact that the US minimum wage laws are so abhorrent that you felt the need to cite your source is tragically comedic.
American obsession with tips is second only to our obsession with making sure it's super easy to get guns. It's culturally embedded that tipping is a good thing which is exactly what all these employers want people to think as they continue to underpay.
Tipping is a good thing. It's a way to reward good work.
But they only work if they're not mandatory and we can keep 100% of it
Tipping is …. a way to reward good work.
It hasn’t been this for most of my life. Tipping is an essentially mandated addition to a few specific job types to get basic service and to replace practically non-existent wages (and to overpay in relation to their peers)
I pay tips to get served at all, and to keep my food from being tampered with.
I willingly paid higher tips during pandemic to the people risking their health in customer facing jobs. However I object to the new normal of 20%+, I object to tips being added automatically, and I object to so many more jobs demanding tips. I especially object to being charged tips on self-service.
Nah, strong disagree here. There's no ifs. Systems this broken should be replaced not nurtured. Your attitude is a pervasive on in the states though. The idea of not tipping is viewed somehow as elitist or greedy. I participate in the practice as a member of society, short of massively organized protest type actions, the only way change comes here is legislative, but that's like hoping for better gun laws. One off individual refusals to tip accomplish nothing, but doing some education is a move in the right direction.
See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abolish-tipping_n_5991796
As a very easy to read intro, but there is lots written on this. Don't forget the tipping culture in the US is pretty unique. While present elsewhere the dependance on tipping as income is a pretty rare thing - it's not a brave wild experiment to try to do away with it. With appropriate legislation workers would only benefit.
In Europe it works well. Sometimes I don't get any tips and it's absolutely fine, some other times I get invited for a drink or even food, some other times I just get some money (tips are called "Trinkgeld" in German, "drinking money", which accurately reflects their purpose). It's not part of my wage, I'm getting paid properly, it's just something on top of it (and when I get tips, I get to keep 100% - it's money specifically for my enjoyment as a way of thanking me for bringing others enjoyment).
The tipping culture you have in the USA can't really be considered a tipping culture, it's just that customers are paying the workers' wages. And you even force people to tip instead of reserving it for good service. I absolutely don't support this way of tipping.
US minimum wage and tipping culture is awful, but in this case I think they’re more referring to “the missing middle class”. We’ve lost a lot of decently paid middle class jobs, such as skilled manufacturing, and many of the replacements are much lower paid service and gig work.
Tipping is part of the US meta-shit-culture that is really just we are a business-supporting country that happens to have citizens in it.
United States culture is a country by the Corpo, for the Corpo, with we dregs doing all the work for them and everything is 60 steps so you're too busy to realize it.
I'm fully on board with your comment, take my upvote... but if you're suffering from the nonexistence of public space and you can possibly get out West before you're stuck for good, that is one thing that everyone who comes here from anywhere east still tells me, that they can hardly believe how much public land there is.
On the other hand, though, to actually make use of all that public land over here, attempting to do so by making plenty of money and therefore having plenty of time and transportation options is a vicious circle that only leads to more frustration for most. The average Californian spends so much time in their own city, barely able to get a few clipped weekends off to enjoy the vast open and unpopulated areas that lie very close by. If you give up on your future (or "the" future) you can still live and work a shitty job in a small town and have lots of time to enjoy the wilderness. I went for broke and did that for many years. Now I'm back in cities because I can't tell the difference anymore and a city is just a different type of wilderness, now that all roads seem to be leading to the same dark future.
Yup… wish there was a way forward
Sounds good
Sees like you found it again :)
I agree with everything except the people are fake part. They exist in fairly large numbers, but it depends on where you live, I guess. They sure as hell aren't fake where I grew up (NJ).
