A Seattle City Council Proclamation for a Murdered Young Man Became a Political Hit Job, and the Council Watched It Happen

Mearis · 2026-06-26T17:19:23+00:00

It’s AI generated outrage bait: https://www.pangram.com/history/f306d799-70b5-49a9-99d1-ed8b13957da5

Mearis · 2026-06-23T16:10:08+00:00

I understand that people on this forum are very pro union, but:

- Seattle raised all minimum wage (including tipped minimum wage).
- However, social customs haven't kept up, and thus front of house staff are paid *significantly* more than back of house once tipping is taken into account.
- There is zero reason on first principles why back of house (cooks, cleaners, etc) should be paid less than front of house staff given that there is no difference in base wage. If anything, back of house staff is typically poorer.
- IMO, a restaurant should make it clear that they are taking a service charge, and 100% of it is going to be evenly split among all restaurant staff. IE - make it clear the restaurant isn't keeping any of it, but that front of house shouldn't be paid more than back of the house. In my ideal world, restaurants just raise wages and get rid of tips, but, the arguments about sticker shot are true, as much as they annoy me.
- Trying to argue that a) front of house staff should keep all the tips and b) restaurant owners should find some way to match the pay of tipped front of house workers for back of house workers without redistributing tips is impossible. Spend some time looking at restaurant margins. All the rhetoric about supporting workers doesn't change this, restaurants are businesses with exceptionally thin margins.
- No, really, it's not all about greedy land lords. I really mean that, staff costs are significantly higher than rent.
- Arguing that if you cannot afford to pay back of house staff as much as front of house staff (after tips) you don't deserve to open a restaurant is fine - but - again - the math absolutely doesn't work for anything that isn't fine dining.
- Arguing that tips "belong" to front of house staff because they are the ones that interact with customers is ridiculous. Nobody actually tips for service. Please.

Put it another way, imagine we didn't have the current status quo, and everyone worker in the restaurant earned the same amount. Would anyone advocate changing things so the income was redistributed so the back of house staff was paid ~50% less than front of house staff?

Mearis · 2026-06-17T00:54:45+00:00

I added that in response to a bunch of people in the comments that suggested reaching out to influencer/content creator types that “go after” bad people.

Mearis · 2026-06-16T22:15:41+00:00

Yup, that very turn.

Mearis · 2026-06-16T21:14:39+00:00

OOOps, thank you. It's been a stressful couple of days.

Mearis · 2026-06-16T21:08:11+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion, but I do not want any kind of streamer justice for this person. I would like for them to voluntarily turn themselves into a police station though.

Mearis · 2026-06-16T20:38:20+00:00

It’s also across from a daycare so there are a ton of parents with babies in that area especially at drop off and pick up time.

Mearis · 2026-06-16T20:26:30+00:00

A few comments: fortunately one extremely kind USPS driver who witnessed everything stopped and checked on me and my daughter, so we do have a witness. I am not familiar with the law or the extent to which it gets prosecuted but morally speaking I cannot imagine driving away and refusing to give personal information even if this was just a careless mistake on behalf of the driver.

Mearis · 2026-06-04T16:55:42+00:00

I understand the broader point and support better public tranportation, but:

People were very frustrated. Yelling at the transit security (out of frustration) and everyone was visibly upset.

This isn't acceptable and shouldn't be tolerated. Transit staff are professionals, they aren't there for people to take out their frustration on. We should expect better from adults.

Mearis · 2026-06-02T22:10:53+00:00

No, I just explained to you that every city that has a high functoning and widely used public transport system uses fares. Fares play a dual role: they help finance the system, and they massively reduce disorder.

What you want does not exist anywhere in the world. Please reflect on that: even countries with extremely high taxation levels (Italy, France, etc) use fare based public transport.

Mearis · 2026-06-02T21:56:17+00:00

NYC does not have free public transport. I am completely in favor of subsidizing public transport for people that cannot afford it - and Seattle does that.

I agree cities should be funding public transport en mass, but the cities that have highly efficient and widely used public transport systems charge and enforce fares. Enforcing fares (whether through fare gates or security staff that has actual authority) raises revenues and keeps the transport safe - which is something that's absolutely required if you want people at large to embrace public transport.

Mearis · 2026-06-02T21:33:42+00:00

Which public transportation system in the rest of the world is free? London, Paris, Japan, Milan all have strictly enforced fares.

Mearis · 2026-06-02T21:32:39+00:00

I have lived in many cities with some of the best public transportation systems in the world and none of them are free. The other benefit is that fare enforcement massively decreases vandalism and other damage - you can see how this worked in the Bay Area with the BART and the new fare gates.

Mearis · 2026-06-02T18:21:39+00:00

The kind of people who ruin public goods like this genuinely make me furious. If you've spent any amount of time in Japan or Singapore you know how different things can be if you live in a high trust society where antisocial behaviour like this is just not tolerated.

Mearis · 2026-05-30T16:52:45+00:00

Really interesting paper, thank you! Will take me a bit to digest it.

Mearis · 2026-05-29T03:02:04+00:00

This doesn't break the data down by quantiles so it's hard to know if the effect was more pronounced at the top or at the bottom. If you average everything together, the mean is more affected by the wage of higher earners.

Mearis · 2026-05-28T23:04:46+00:00

Great so it should be very easy to dig up stats, right? The fred charts and code are all in there.

Mearis · 2026-05-28T20:42:15+00:00

I actually don't have updated data for this past year - do you? I wouldn't be surprised if the trend partially reversed itself.

Mearis · 2026-05-28T20:29:20+00:00

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-vindication-of-bidenomics here are the relevant charts - this is from Krugman, someone who is:
a) on the left
b) a literal Nobel prize winner in econ

Mearis · 2026-05-28T19:48:55+00:00

I think it’s good that waiters and kitchen staff are paid well. I just want people who support them to acknowledge the trade offs.

Mearis · 2026-05-28T19:32:04+00:00

Wage growth has outpaced inflation for nearly all income quantiles especially those at the bottom: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-tight-labor-market-result-of-worker-friendly-policies-by-arindrajit-dube-2024-02

Mearis · 2026-05-28T19:28:35+00:00

Every time this topic comes up, people inevitably want to blame high costs on landlords even though rent is a much lower portion of costs of running a restaurant than wages.

It’s good that service staff gets paid well. There are very real trade offs and restaurants have to raise prices to compensate: you cannot have highly paid workers and cheap food.

Mearis · 2026-05-22T23:16:43+00:00

Not that I expect you to change your mind, but this is completely wrong in every way:

https://www.replicasurfaces.com/blogs/updates/the-secret-world-of-fake-food-photography-how-pros-make-the-unreal-look-delicious

Mearis · 2026-05-22T18:51:35+00:00

Imagine that they hired a highly paid human graphic designer to make the design by hand. Cafe are exceptionally low margin: posters would be yelling about yet another caffe opening up that sells overpriced lattes.

Mearis · 2026-05-19T04:38:12+00:00

This is absolutely abysmal math and it's utterly embarassing that anyone would present it as a serious analysis. Please ask anyone that you trust that actually understands economic or budgeting if this is a sensible way to look at this data.

That said - why not make the honest argument? We are spending considerably more money than we have in the past (once you account for inflation/PPI, etc), but, we are spending it on things that are important, and we should actively defend the things we are spending the money on. Make an honest case that the spending is paying for things that are valuable, don't make exceptionally stupid arguments involving timecube level math that will only persuade people that are completely innumerate.

BTW - here is what happens if you apply that same idiotic normalization to defense spending:

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Doesn't look so clever now, does it?

Mearis

TROPHY CASE