Residents in Seattle, Washington, plan to stop tipping as a minimum wage hike in the Democrat-run city looms.
The city’s minimum wage is supposed to go from $19.97 to $20.76 an hour on January 1, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.
Tipping workers on top of the approaching hourly rate hike does not appear to be a popular idea with some residents who have said they will no longer be shelling out the extra money for workers.
The Mail article continued:
One user who shared a Reddit post on the wage hike, which has picked up steam in the local area, said: ‘With Seattle’s new minimum wage going into effect really soon, most food industry workers are finally reaching a level playing field.
‘As a result, I’ll no longer be tipping more than 5-10%. And I’m ONLY doing that if service is EXCEPTIONAL. It’s only fair—hard work deserves fair pay across all industries.
‘Any instance where I am ordering busing my own table, getting my own utensils, etc warrants $0. I also am not tipping at coffee shops anymore.’
Seattle’s minimum wage rate is among the highest in America, KTTH radio host Jason Rantz wrote in an opinion piece on Thursday. He noted that Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance requires the increases based on inflation.
Rantz then said, “Seattle restaurant operators are panicked ahead of a minimum wage update that will now prevent tips and benefits from being deducted from hourly wages. For some Seattle restaurants, it will add about $45,000 in expenses per month that they don’t have.”
Restaurant worker Brandon Nyland also spoke of the difficulties the pay raise may shove onto businesses, King 5 reported on Friday.
“A lot of restaurants are going to have razor-thin, one- to three-percent profit margins. So, a lot of places are probably going to build that price increase into the menu,” he said.
In 2021, Breitbart News’s economics editor John Carney noted that President Joe Biden (D) claimed raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would force employers to pay a living wage to people working for them. However, Carney said, “the weight of economic studies say that it would have an adverse effect on employment.”
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