All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
The minimum wage is lower if you have a job where you can get tips. Your employer is supposed to pay the difference up to regular minimum wage if you don't make it, but that often just opens a conversation of "well, why aren't you working hard enough to get the right tips"
Trotskyists have the right idea about focusing so much on publishing and distributing their own newspapers. Unfortunately those papers are filled with unapproachable Trotskyist rants, usually about big global issues, and contain basically zero real journalism. A free leftist local newspaper with a website and a print copy handed out at a few busy transit stations every morning could, for example, actually send a reporter to report on local goings-on in the town hall and so on. Given how so many local news outlets have closed over the past couple of decades and left many towns and cities without any local news, the average person might actually want to read such a paper.
And invariably these increases end up being “the $2.75 hash browns are now $3.15” and the reactionaries act like that’s the straw that will break the customer’s back.
My Large Sons and I used to be able to take a $20 to Waffle House and we would each be able to eat enough greasy fried potatoes to have diarrhea all day.
Now only 3 of us can and my youngest large adult son, Durk, hasn't clogged a toilet since all this started.
Tipping sucks if you aren’t attractive. Knew pretty girls who made good tips on their looks alone while less attractive girls barely made half of what they did.
For those not in the US, tipping culture is a plague on the proletariat. Front of house workers in most places get paid $2.25(was 2.13 when I worked in the food industry 15 years ago)an hour and are expected to make the rest up in tips.
Some restaurants have opted to pay an actual wage(tho not exactly a living wage) with a no-tip policy and have proven that it can work(because duh) but most resturaunts are franchises where one rich fuck owns like 12-15 ir whatever resturaunts in a region and makes six figures for essentially doing nothing.
But hey at least we get free soda refills, right? Except for resturaunts that are opting for cans instead of fountain soda but I guess that's a complaint for another day.