But the real function of tipping, as the economist Robert Reich explained to me this year, is to subsidize employers—including some of the largest restaurant chains in the country—for the poverty wages they pay their workers, who in many states receive just $2.13 an hour rather than the regular minimum wage. And it won’t cost the owners of restaurants and hotels a penny, which is perhaps why Trump, himself a member of this ownership class, has embraced the idea—and why the N.R.A. The earthquake scale is logarithmic, so the difference between a magnitude 8.8 earthquake and a magnitude 9.0 earthquake—which is not even the far end of what we can reasonably anticipate in a full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone—is really significant.
Author: Eyal Press
Published at: 2025-07-30 22:30:00
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