Like most people, I’m a sucker for click bait, and one of my favorite variations of the genre is the feel-good big-tip story. For example, rapper Post Malone leaving a $3,000 tip above and beyond the $500-plus “gratuity” charge on a large restaurant bill. Nice guy by virtually all accounts, and the server was grateful for the unexpected pocketbook boost.

Not everyone tips so well, of course. Some people don’t tip at all, and not all restaurants tack on the “gratuity” charge. Anyone who works in a “tipped” service role can relate stories of demanding customers who stiffed them on tips.

I try to tip generously, with bigger tips for outstanding service However, the movement to eliminate tipping and replace it with a minimum wage (usually coupled with a proposal to increase the minimum wage) is a bad thing all around.

In trying to make the case for such changes, The New Republic‘s Elena Soderblom inadvertently exposes the scam involved by lying, then admitting she’s lying in the very next paragraph, in the apparent hope that no one will notice.

The lie: “Many are unaware of the subminimum wage that allows a tipped employee to be paid as little as $2.13 per hour.”

The admission of the lie: “[E]mployers are not required to pay minimum wages as long as customers make up the difference.”

By law, employers are required to ensure that employees receive AT LEAST the legally mandated minimum wage (I oppose minimum wage laws, by the way, but they do exist).

The idea of replacing tipping with a minimum wage doesn’t provide a “floor” to the employee’s earnings — that “floor” is already there. Rather, it creates an artificial “ceiling” to those earnings.

If the minimum wage is $15 an hour, the un-tipped employee makes $15 an hour and not a penny more unless the boss decides to offer a raise. With tipping, someone who provides good service to grateful customers may average $20 or $30 or more per hour … but still gets that $15 per hour, bare minimum, regardless.

The only real explanation for the effort to get rid of tipping is that proponents want to corral service employees — at their own expense — into political pushes for higher minimum wages, and perhaps unionization efforts.

Some service workers resist these efforts, for good reason. The District of Columbia’s bartenders and wait staff  opposed a 2022 tipping law that drove up bar and restaurant menu prices by requiring the full $16.10 minimum wage. With tipping, they were accustomed to making $36-40 per hour.

If you live in an area with such counter-productive rules, don’t blame your waiter or bartender for the higher prices. Blame the politicians who imposed those higher prices. And if you can, please tip generously anyway.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Civilians are not collateral damage,” the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean tweeted (or whatever it’s called now on X, formerly Twitter) on October 27. “Patients are not collateral damage. Health staff & health facilities are not collateral damage. Children, women & men sheltering in health facilities are not collateral damage. International Humanitarian Law must be respected.”

WHO is obviously referring to events in Gaza. Unfortunately, the statement goes both too far and not far enough.

The “too far” part:

On a quick read of “international law” — specifically Protocol I and the 1997 Additional Protocol of the 1949 Geneva Conventions — the claim that people in hospitals can’t be “collateral damage” seems unsupported. Article 19 does order that such facilities “shall not be attacked,” but if the attack is on a nearby “legitimate” military target, then per Article 51(5)(b) the attackers merely need avoid  “anticipated civilian damage or injury” that’s “clearly excessive” in relation to “anticipated military advantage.”

The “not far enough” part:

There is no moral, nor should there be any legal,  Get Out of Jail Free Card for those who injure or kill non-combatants.

War is an intentional activity and “collateral damage” is therefore by definition not “accidental.”

When YOU squeeze the trigger on a rifle, pull the lanyard on a howitzer, or press a button that drops a bomb or launches a missile, YOU are morally responsible — and should be held legally responsible — for the results of your actions.

It’s on YOU to know where that munition is going and who’s on or near that spot.

If the results of your action include the deaths of, or injuries to, non-combatants, that’s also on you.

Your action may be intentional, reckless, or negligent, but whatever else it may be it is NOT accidental.

The obvious objection to imposing something analogous to a  “felony murder rule” on actions taken during war is that few would willingly participate in such activities if they expected to be held to account for their crimes. That’s a feature, not a bug. War is a bad thing. Making it harder to recruit people to conduct it is a good thing.

Regimes (both actual and would-be) try to claim special exemptions from basic morality for themselves and their agents when it comes to the lives and livelihoods caught in the middle of their fights. But shiny badges and fancy uniforms don’t change the moral equation. Nor should they.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“US officials,” Nahal Toosi, Lara Seligman, and Paul McLeary write at Politico, “are worried that violence in Israel’s neighbors will spiral into a larger regional war.” More specifically, they’re worried that such a war will result in US casualties among US troops across the region.

For some reason, though, the Biden administration is flooding the region with MORE troops — a second carrier strike group and (presumably US-operated) air defense systems — instead of withdrawing the thousands already there to the relative safety of the country they enlisted to, allegedly, defend.

Why are US troops even there? There is no “why.” They’ve ALWAYS been there, since the beginning of history … October 7, 2023. That’s when a group no one had ever heard of launched an inexplicable attack on a brand new country with no previous regional beefs that might explain any of the craziness.

The previous beginning of history, September 11, 2001, set the previous clock ticking when another group no one had ever heard of launched an inexplicable attack on the United States.

The US regime hadn’t bankrolled and launched that group in the 1980s to give the Soviet Union “its own Vietnam.” Its leader hadn’t issued a 1996 declaration of war demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East. The group hadn’t attacked US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 to drive the point home, or the USS Cole in 2000 for emphasis.

None of that ever happened. A Big Bang occurred at 8:46 Eastern Time on 9/11, erasing everything that had gone before and making anything that came after totally, completely, and obviously justified.

Another Big Bang occurred on October 7, so here we go again.

Such Big Bangs occur frequently throughout history. Think June 28, 1914, or September 1, 1939, or December 7, 1941, or February 24, 2022.

These Big Bangs are always described as “everything changed” moments, after which we’re expected to forget anything — incidents, grievances, and especially moral codes — associated with a time before, so that those demanding such amnesia from us can get away with doing whatever they please until the next Big Bang resets the clock again.

In reality, these “everything changed” claims are “nothing must be allowed to change” demands. They’re an attempt to erase our memories so we won’t notice our rulers doing the same things over and over while promising us different results.

Perpetual war is our lot until  we defy our rulers’ magic resets by allowing ourselves to remember, confront, and learn from history.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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