Are commies good tippers?

I went to Sonic yesterday and, as I rarely have occasion to do, paid with cash. I almost always use my check card, and since Sonic doesn't print any sort of gratuity line on their receipts I am unable to give the carhop a tip. Well, yesterday I had cash and so she got $1.00 for her trouble.

I am pretty sure that Sonic carhops are paid at least minimum wage and not the $2.13 an hour that tip-dependent workers in Texas get. That the minimum wage is a joke and at least $7.00 less an hour than one would need to make the so-called "living wage" is a discussion for another time, but the point is they aren't in the same category as a server at a restaurant. I don't think, technically, you are "supposed" to tip them, or else there would be that option when you pay by card.

I realized that I give them tips because I am a socialist.

Rather, I am a socialist for the same reason that I give them tips. I care about people even if I've never met them. And I've realized that there is no true connection between work and income and property: it is all a fiction, so we may as well make it a fair fiction.

I don't make more money than a carhop because I am special, I make more money because of a series of random factors outside my control - genes that made me fairly intelligent, socioeconomic background that put me in decent schools, luck that I have a wife to motivate me to do things. I shouldn't be rewarded for these things, I should be rewarded for the things that I can control: effort and sacrifice.

The CEO of a corporation might very well put in more effort and sacrifice things like family to get ahead. But I don't think there is a CEO alive who works a hundred times harder than their employees, yet there are CEOs who get well more than a hundred times their employee's wages. People that are uneducated get paid far less than educated people because they can't get jobs requiring education, but rarely is education related to anything they can control. Family problems, economic poverty, discrimination, even bad genes are not things that people can always overcome.

So I don't mind giving a little bit extra here and there, even when I have little to give.

economics, personal, socialism