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An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

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Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#121

Post by gberger »

pc86 wrote: post #97
jstanley wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping. If you want more money, put your prices up.

Please explain how raising the price of a large pizza increases money in the driver's pocket.

The pizza place generates more revenue -> the increased revenue can be used to increase wages -> drivers get more money

It's that simple, but it doesn't work in American tipping culture.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#122

Post by bkor »

psychometry wrote: post #111
jstanley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company wants to get more money from the customer (to pay to the driver or not) they need to put the prices up. If the driver wants more money he needs to negotiate that with his employer. It's not the customer's responsibility to pay over the quoted price just because the driver thinks he is underpaid.

You don't understand tipping in the U.S. Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.

> Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.

In US most states have to make up to ensure people are paid at least minimum wage. Even if that's not the case, it's the governments responsibility (in case employers don't) to ensure people get paid enough. This as individual employees don't have a strong negotiation ability.

A customer is not obliged at all to tip; not unless the definition didn't suddenly change from "a sum of money given to someone as a reward for a service.". It should be a reward, not an expectation or even an insult when you don't receive it.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#124

Post by Bartweiss »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #93
bruceb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One need not suppose anything. Look who has a majority of the H1-B visas or who comes here for higher education. Those who are not educated from East Asia can't easily come to the US illegally as those who can cross overland (Mexico and central America) can. Poor Chinese villagers are not boating to America.

How is that significantly different from Western Europe? Or the Middle East? Or Sub-Saharan Africa? Are the poorest of the poor there making it here? Why are East Asians over-represented in higher education or H1-Bs compared to other places?

Two thoughts, to begin.

First, much of East Asia has extremely demanding placement tests for elite high schools (and sometimes lower schools). You might reasonably say that we're only taking students from good high schools around the world, but that's a comment about school quality, not students. As people often point out, Harvard dropouts are almost as successful as Harvard grads - merely getting in represents a powerful filter. So it's plausible that we're taking rich/educated elites worldwide, but in East Asia we've got a talent/skill filter comparable to college admissions being applied in advance.

Second, your point: there's a non-trivial penalty for being a Chinese applicant to a US college, and it's not particularly obvious what impact that has. I suppose it could be that the harsher requirements for acceptance are driving the difference, and we don't have any real evidence on how responsive outcomes are to changing that restriction. (Is there a good breakdown of outcomes for a given group by visa type? That might show whether nation-specific admission rules on some visa types are changing outcomes.)

(The third thought, of course, is "it's a huge multifactorial mess and there's probably not enough data to trust any conclusion we come to".)

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#125

Post by Consultant32452 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #124
Consultant32452 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that significantly different from Western Europe? Or the Middle East? Or Sub-Saharan Africa? Are the poorest of the poor there making it here? Why are East Asians over-represented in higher education or H1-Bs compared to other places?

Two thoughts, to begin. First, much of East Asia has extremely demanding placement tests for elite high schools (and sometimes lower schools). You might reasonably say that we're only taking students from good high schools around the world, but that's a comment about school quality, not students. As people often point out, Harvard dropouts are almost as successful as Harvard grads - merely getting in represents a pow…

First: Great, so their culture is what is causing them to outperform us in virtually every positive metric. That certainly doesn't make me want to be less welcoming to them.

Second: The non-trivial penalty came AFTER Chinese people became over-represented.

It's not as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be. Something is causing East Asians to outperform us in basically every positive trait. They have higher IQs, higher incomes, lower criminality rates, lower poverty rates, etc. And these stats hold true even generations after immigration. Maybe it feels complicated because you're concerned about the root cause analysis. I'm not. They're doing great, we should want great people here.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#126

Post by Bartweiss »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #125
Bartweiss wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two thoughts, to begin. First, much of East Asia has extremely demanding placement tests for elite high schools (and sometimes lower schools). You might reasonably say that we're only taking students from good high schools around the world, but that's a comment about school quality, not students. As people often point out, Harvard dropouts are almost as successful as Harvard grads - merely getting in represents a pow…

First: Great, so their culture is what is causing them to outperform us in virtually every positive metric. That certainly doesn't make me want to be less welcoming to them. Second: The non-trivial penalty came AFTER Chinese people became over-represented. It's not as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be. Something is causing East Asians to outperform us in basically every positive trait. They have highe…

I wasn't the same person you were replying to upthread, and I'm certainly not arguing against offering more visas. I just thought your "given that we're taking elites, what's different?" question was interesting, and wanted to raise a possible answer.

(I agree that if the penalty came after better outcomes, it's not a relevant factor. I wasn't familiar enough with which restrictions were in place when to say.)

But yes: the complicated part is root causes, and that's not relevant to whether we should expand our visa/citizenship program; we certainly should. If someone in the thread disagrees with you there, it's not me.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#127

Post by KozmoNau7 »

jdmichal wrote: post #106
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't it's the same as unpaid internships. You can never completely eliminate the cost, as there is a limited supply and you can't give away the tickets for free. But you can certainly minimize the costs. The tickets have to be put up for sale at some specific time that is usually advertised well in advance, which allows (most) people to plan for it. For some artists, a number of tickets are sold earlier to members…

Use a lottery system with prepaid authorizations? Pretty much any system where people can put up some money and walk away. Fixed price, no queues.

Then it's just random chance. People usually don't like that sort of thing, outside of literal lotteries.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#128

Post by emodendroket »

bkor wrote: post #120
rkangel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here). This means that when someone in the UK might withhol…

> I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe. It's not attitude, they do underpay certain people. But at the same time various US pizza places do include a service or delivery fee which still doesn't go to the driver. As a result you might pay a delivery fee which is isn't a delivery fee. In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough t…

> In a restaurant if they don't get tipped enough the restaurant has to make up the difference / pay them minimum wage (though this rule to differ per state). So not paying still should result in minimum wage.

In principle this is true; in practice it is rarely honored.

> From what I understood in US it's rather arbitrary whom you pay extra and which persons you do not (e.g. even pay extra to get a haircut). Once you travel more you'll notice these rules are rather arbitrary (custom in one country, totally unexpected in another). For restaurants I often don't go back to the same place twice so I don't see the point of randomly paying more. As result I'm trying to stop doing that (it feels impolite, this despite me sometimes being unique in adding giving a tip). Paying by bankcard helps to avoid tipping.

All customs are arbitrary to some extent, but the rule of thumb is that if you're getting a personal service from someone who's not a professional you should tip.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#129

Post by emodendroket »

bkor wrote: post #122
psychometry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand tipping in the U.S. Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research.

> Stop commenting about this until after you've done a bit of research. In US most states have to make up to ensure people are paid at least minimum wage. Even if that's not the case, it's the governments responsibility (in case employers don't) to ensure people get paid enough. This as individual employees don't have a strong negotiation ability. A customer is not obliged at all to tip; not unless the definition did…

Such rules are routinely violated. Perhaps tips "should" be a reward, but they aren't; they're an essential part of compensation, and you're not striking a blow against the system by denying your server their tip. You're just being a cheapskate.

Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

#130

Post by Consultant32452 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #126
Consultant32452 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: Great, so their culture is what is causing them to outperform us in virtually every positive metric. That certainly doesn't make me want to be less welcoming to them. Second: The non-trivial penalty came AFTER Chinese people became over-represented. It's not as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be. Something is causing East Asians to outperform us in basically every positive trait. They have highe…

I wasn't the same person you were replying to upthread, and I'm certainly not arguing against offering more visas. I just thought your "given that we're taking elites, what's different?" question was interesting, and wanted to raise a possible answer. (I agree that if the penalty came after better outcomes, it's not a relevant factor. I wasn't familiar enough with which restrictions were in place when to say.) But ye…

It's almost certainly IQ. IQ also correlates to all those other positive traits. East Asians have higher average IQs than most other people, particularly spacial reasoning and math which explains their over-representation in engineering. Conversely Ashkenazi Jews have higher than average verbal IQs which explains why they appear over represented in media. But that doesn't get us very far because it just gets us back to East Asians outperforming us on IQ tests created by mostly white people and is supposedly culturally biased to have white people outperform. There's something definitely going on here. Maybe it's genetics, maybe it's diet, maybe it's culture. Possibly a combination. It's not really helpful to try to have a discussion on IQ, so I just focus on the positive traits that are derived from IQ. It tends to trigger people less and raw IQ isn't actually important to me compared to things like criminality and economic output.
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