But I want to know how we are going to account for ‘base salaries’ to work in a service industry setting that actually are fair across the board. The minimum wage in Florida is not even near enough to get a studio apartment in the Miami or Fort Lauderdale area.
Raise prices of the menu. Housing prices in Florida or anywhere else should be the concern of the employer and the government, not the diner / patron.
Tipping 18-20% is standard, and I'm the first to tell visitors to the US that they
must do this - it's not optional. But if restaurants believe their workers need more than 18-20% tips + their wages, then they should raise the prices of the menu, not expect people to tip increasingly more.
I also hear we should pay a living wage and not have to tip. Are servers paid a living wage in Europe?
Depends. Europe is very big and a collection of 40+ countries with different laws and policies.
As a broad generalization, servers earn more in base salary and less in tips (where tips exist) than in the US. If you looked at a histogram of server pay, it would be far narrower in Europe than in the US -- few people earning at the very low end, but also few people earning the kind of very high incomes (most in tips) that high-end servers can make in the US.
Maybe it’s me on my vacation budget, but i feel it is way cheaper to go out to eat in Europe than the USA, even if the dollar is weaker. I definitely feel it’s because alcohol isn’t marked up as much. I’ve been out in Spain (and other European countries) and spent $90 with multiple plates and bottle of wine that would have cost me over $200 in the US.
Yes, there are often inexpensive local bottles of wine in most European restaurants (especially countries that produce wine), and the markup is much lower. Mediterraneans would boycott any restaurant that tried to charge US wine prices.
The difference is that people in Europe have universal health insurance and a deeper social safety net in general. In some parts of Europe at least, housing is more affordable than it is in the US here. Being a wait person or bartender is still considered a full-time profession for adults, at least in some countries.
As a broad generalization, this is true. Another factor: population density is higher, and public transport is better, so people can get to work without a car usually even in mid-size cities. (A car may make life easier, though.) Motor scooters are also more common and very affordable.
Some parts of Europe have done better than others (e.g., London, Dublin) at keeping housing costs affordable. In London, most servers have very long commutes, and restaurants and pubs close early because the servers need to take the last tube often to very far zones.
Other parts of Europe, e.g., Switzerland and the Nordics, have more protectionist policies: very high minimum wages pegged to inflation, virtual bans on foreigners buying property, etc. I promise you that no one will say going out to eat in those countries is inexpensive
.
One last caveat: what's true for the older generation is often not true for the younger generation. Youth unemployment remains sky-high in Mediterranean countries (in part due to protections for older workers), and restaurant/server jobs for younger people are often on temporary contracts or cash-in-hand, very low paid, and with terrible conditions.
that I try not to be in my leisure time.
