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Comment by hshdhdhj4444 | Hacker News Reader

No tax on tips is the kind of policy you’d come up with if you were creating a caricature of the far left.

And yet, in today’s America that’s the major economic policy of the leader of the Republican Party.

In what bizzaro world would a far left party want to support the weird American fixation on relying on tipping to ensure a worker makes a decent living?

A actual far left policy would be a collectivised or cooperative workplaces that don't rely on tips to subsidies salaries.

Parent commenter doesn't mean far left globally, but rather far left in America, which is actually centrist globally.

Well, it's a very populist move and the extremes of either party will go down that road to get votes. Far right parties are generally for social programs as long as the wrong people don't get them.

> of the leader of the Republican Party.

You have too much partisanship on your mind.

Harris (Democratic party leader) endorsed it: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/12/politics/taxes-on-tips-elimin...

That may have been a strategic endorsement, to keep it from becoming a campaign issue.

Correct, she stole a bad idea

Perhaps.

But it also expands the idea that the customer/buyer has financial power over the server by encouraging a tipping culture.

Donald Trump and his sons have repeatedly said that don't pay on contracts when they view the work is poorly done or insufficient, in response to claims of non-payment.

Encouraging tipping makes such "payment discretion" easier.

Two decades back, if you told me someone wanted to dramatically raise tariffs, and have the government take a stake in Intel, I'd have assumed this was someone who labeled themselves a Socialist.

After all, the government taking ownership of industries matches common definitions of Socialism.

In contrast, tariffs and the government taking stakes in private companies reminds me of fascist Italy under Mussolini: https://www.historyfromonestudenttoanother.com/a-level/a-lev...

> Charter of Labour, 1927

> He recognised private enterprises as the most efficient, gaining him support from rich industrialists.

> The charter also stated that the state could take control of, manage or encourage enterprises that were considered inefficient.

History didn’t begin in 1980. Tariffs and economic interventionism were founding planks of the Lincoln GOP: https://mises.org/mises-daily/awful-truth-about-republicans

Well, the "Lincoln GOP" was also generally in favor of tearing down and burning confederate flags, so I think it makes more sense to compare things over a shorter time-periods like "in living memory."

Parent poster's explicit "two decades back" scale is entirely reasonable for the phenomenon they are pointing out.

Lincoln was concerned about national unity foremost, and allowing the south to preserve its identity facilitated that after the war. It may have been the most successful reconciliation after a bitter civil war ever in history. Regardless, the economic forces shaping the nation have been shifting around but ever present since the founding. We were fighting about a central bank in 1789 and are still fighting about it today!

The Intel story is hilarious considering the whining about Huawei a few years ago.

American hypocrisy never fails.

One or two events do not change big system.

And US still needs to protect x86/MS as best NSA source :) There is even "intel" right in the name ! ;) Also business and best and cheap compute cpus. I guess they need a bit of help until some patents go off...

And do not forget foundry with "photonics" tech cooperating with military...

Lack of wild and dumb capitalism is not automatically socialism.

And belive me: socialism is the TRASH - replacing private ownership destroy value and sensibility of any action.

It has broad bipartisan support and was one of very few policy changes promised by the Harris Walz campaign.

Conservatives like it, because it is effectively a de minimus exemption on taxes, simplifying the tax collection process, and liberals like it because it results in more progressive taxes, with tip earners overrepresented amongst low-income earners.

It does nothing to simplify the tax code, and it opens up a universe of loopholes. The concept may have some merit, but the implementation is sloppy and lazy.

I think ultimately very few people really care about simplifying the tax code. The cost of a complex tax code is the $19.95-$200 cost of preparing your taxes, which everyone would gladly eat if it meant they could take advantage of tax deductions on pages 1,455, 19,210 and 245,908 of the tax code totaling > the cost of tax prep.

Simplifies tax collection process ≠ Simplifies tax code

A few lines of tax code means millions of people don't have to worry about unpredictable withholdings due to significant changes in tips from day to day, month to month, and year to year.

Also, what's sloppy about it? It's just a deduction for up to a maximum amount from tips, for a specified list of occupations, with the maximum decreasing as income increases above a specified level. That's pretty simple, as far as tax code goes. What do you think would be a less sloppy way of implementing it?

> if you were creating a caricature of the far left

Yes. And a big round of applause to welcome Mr. Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani has not supported no-tax-on-tips.

And? He's not a caricature of the far left?

Are you reacting purely to the phrase "caricature of the far left" in a way that ignores and even goes against the rest of the post, to bring up a guy you don't like and make no other commentary?

If I'm missing something help me out.

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