Yep: "The American System of Tipping Makes No Sense."

In Europe, the birthplace of Western aristocracy, countries have moved away from a practice that once denoted class differences. Today, servers across that continent are paid living wages and don’t rely on crowdfunded generosity.

The United States, founded as a rebuke to the old world, has allowed a de facto aristocracy to bloom in our country, where low taxes on the rich, combined with meager welfare for the poor, lead to income inequality reminiscent of a feudal state. Tips are a tiny part of that big picture. But they’re a perfect representation of the philosophy that underlies it: Tipping survives because of the notion that industriousness must be coaxed from individuals through constant threat of their immiseration.

Here's the link.

The American System of Tipping Makes No Sense, by Derek Thompson (The Atlantic)

If you want to understand how meritocracy acts as a cover for inequality, look no further than our broken understanding of gratuity.

Here’s a simple question. It’s Sunday. You order coffee and a simple breakfast—eggs, bacon, toast—at a local diner. The service is efficient, but not memorable. The bill comes, and it’s $10. What’s the tip?

$1.50, according to typical online guides for foreign travelers in America
$2.00 at least, according to The Washington Post
$3.00 for sure, according to The New York Times
Whatever the hell you want, according to some guys on Twitter

I have no confidence that anything I write here will persuade readers to increase or decrease their average tip. To me, the range of answers raises a larger question: Why are we still crowdfunding worker salaries when tippers so clearly do not know what the hell they’re doing?

"We are not each other’s enemies and we had better learn to be good allies or we will collapse."

Valuable weekend reading.

FUN WITH SHRAPNEL: What unifies white, black, brown, by Erica Rucker (LEO)

... Trump has filled his gold-lined cabinet with ultra rich friends, and their push to keep us divided while filling their coffers will continue. If we are paying attention, poor whites, middle-class whites and marginalized groups have much in common, which should tell us something very important: We are not each other’s enemies and we had better learn to be good allies or we will collapse. We’re being sucked dry by the same snakes.

In The Nation: "Working-class women who voted for Trump tell us a lot about feminism’s relationship to class politics."

Know The Nation:

The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, and the most widely read weekly journal of progressive political and cultural news, opinion and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, with the stated mission to "make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."

A message earlier this week from Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher of The Nation.

Today, we rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists of principle and conscience. Today, we recommit to mobilizing against hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and economic pain. And as we have at other times of crisis in our nation, we will move forward in solidarity and in the belief that stronger communities arise in times of crisis. We rededicate ourselves to thinking anew, to putting forth a compelling vision of fundamental change.

We stand for an inclusive and progressive populism—one that addresses inequality and economic insecurity. We stand with women and with Muslim, African-American, and immigrant communities who have been threatened by the blatantly racist, sexist, and bigoted campaign Trump ran.

As Nation writer Ian Haney-López reminded us just a few weeks ago, “Remaking our politics and economy will depend on a broad coalition that must include substantial numbers of racially anxious whites. Ignoring their fears, or worse, pandering to them, further impoverishes all of us. Instead, we must have a unified message for whites as well as people of color. Fearful of one another, we too easily hand over power to moneyed interests, but working together, we can rebuild the American dream.”

The answer to what some have called Trump’s “whitelash” is not to retreat on social liberalism, ever; it is to double down on an economics that speaks to working and poor people.

The immediate response to Trump’s election is one of opposition—we commit to obstructing, delaying, and halting any attacks on people of color, women, or working people that may come from a Trump administration. But we must also understand why millions are angry and anxious, and why they voted for the cruel hoax that is Trumpism.

We knew this was an election about change and a revolt against political elites. Yet it is also a revolt against what elites in both parties have done or accepted—global trade and tax deals of, by, and for the corporations; Wall Street bailouts; big-money politics and crony capitalism; decades of promises not kept. It is a time for great reflection and an even greater reformation—of the Democratic Party, of our politics, of our society. The Nation's work will continue—as it has in good, not-so-good, and bad times—to offer alternative visions and ideas, to deepen our journalistic mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further the work of the political revolution in a nation divided.

A current excerpt of relevance:

Inequality Between Women Is Crucial to Understanding Hillary’s Loss, by By Kathleen Geier (The Nation)

Working-class women who voted for Trump tell us a lot about feminism’s relationship to class politics.

... Class differences among women are an all but taboo subject. But scholars such as Leslie McCall have found that economic inequality among women is just as large, and has been growing just as fast, as economic inequality among men. This economic divide among women has created one of the most significant fault lines in contemporary feminism. That’s because professional-class women, who have reaped a disproportionate share of feminism’s gains, have dominated the feminist movement, and the social distance between them and their less privileged sisters is wide and growing wider. In the decades since the dawn of the second wave, educated women gained access to status jobs, but working-class women experienced declining wages and (because of the rise of divorce and single parenthood among the working class) shouldered an increasingly heavy burden of care. Yet mainstream feminist groups and pundits have consistently stressed the social and cultural issues that are most important to affluent women, while marginalizing the economic concerns of the female masses.

Listen, Liberal: "The 1 Book Every Entrepreneur Should Read in 2016."

"As Frank explains it, we have two political parties that differ on social issues but which are in near total agreement on economic policy and together are pursuing strategies that shift wealth upward to the professional class, while stripping blue-collar or white-collar workers of job security and the ability to earn a living wage."

Given the tone of recent social media chats, this post from earlier in the week bears repeating.

Robert Reich and Thomas Frank connect the dots between Hillary Clinton, Adam Dickey and Jeff Gahan.

Concurrently, Robert Reich posted the following at his Facebook account. I've highlighted the passage that most clearly explains Jeff Gahan's local governing preferences, and his prioritization to date. Union jobs at Pillsbury were lost, with nothing to replace them -- but Gahan's suburban Eastridge voters wanted parks.

When even Inc. gets it, the wisdom of a close friend is verified, because speaking locally, "Real D's could meet comfortably at Coqui's." Lots of you urge me to look past this, and concentrate on the Democratic Party as bulwark against Trumpism, a saga played out in far-off places.

I'd rather expose the Democratic rot right here at home. When one of them spots me a half-block away and abruptly turns into the alley, I feel like I've accomplished something real.

The 1 Book Every Entrepreneur Should Read in 2016: If the rise of Trump blindsided you, it's because you didn't read this book, by Geoffrey James (Inc.)

Every year I read dozens of books and provide you with a list of the "best of the best" motivational books, sales and marketing books, and management books. Many of the books I recommend (as well as those recommended by various pundits and billionaires) build on familiar themes, like entrepreneurship and leadership.

Once in a blue moon, I run across a book that forces me to think, that challenges me to re-examine my core beliefs about business and politics. The book in this case is Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People. It's an eye-opener and a must-read for entrepreneurs who want to understand what's happening this year in politics and business.

Contrary to what the title seems to imply, the book is not a conservative take-down of the liberal viewpoint. In fact, conservatives are barely mentioned. Instead, it's an expose of how the Democratic party realigned itself with the professional class (that would be the elites like us) and threw the working class under the bus.

Dunman: "Debate over LIFT isn’t a question of political partisanship, but of class."

Classy.

Debate over LIFT isn’t a question of political partisanship, but of class, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has launched the new year and his second term in office with a renewed public relations campaign for Local Investments for Transformation (LIFT), also known as the “local option sales tax.”

Why?

... The problem, as the mayor sees it, is a lack of civic funding for needed civic development. His solution is to let citizens vote to tax themselves equally for projects they approve. That sounds practical, fiscally responsible, and democratic.

It also sounds quite fair. But it isn’t.

Devil's in the details.

It’s unfair because of the nature of the tax it wishes to impose. Sales taxes are regressive. A flat rate, even of just .5 percent, impacts those with less money harder than those with more money.

Class? But I thought Fischer was a Democrat?

... the debate over LIFT isn’t a question of political partisanship, but of class. Should we stifle the already limited buying power of the poorest among us to fund needed projects? We already have a system in place to fund civic improvements. It’s the progressive income tax system, and it needs to be reformed and bolstered.

The last line ... something about Occam's razor springs to mind.