I did pull up the link and it only showed the profits from a single corporation that owns Burger King and Popeyes. Brinker who owns Chili's and Maggianos has a net profit of 2.48%, Denny's has a net profit of 8.25%, Dine Brands which owns Applebee's and IHOP has a net profit of 9.03%. And these are established restaurants that have been around a long time.

Ok. Looks like you're using gross profit while I'm using net profit. And I'm not including franchises like McDonalds or Wendys because most of the profits are from franchise fees and the raw products that their franchisees have to buy at a markup. They also don't have employees that rely on tips and their portions tend to be smaller than a meal at, say, a Denny's which does use employees that rely on tips.

Yet, they shouldn't raise their menu prices because they should have enough money to cover additional wages? With a 5% profit margin? By your reckoning every restaurant in America should be out of business. Yet, you also want our restaurants to follow the European model which serve smaller portions at higher prices. I've said this before and I will say it again. The ills of the US corporations can be laid at the feet of the consumer. CEOs get extremely large salaries and bonuses because they're the scapegoat. Consumers were satisfied with one person taking the blame for a systemic problem that would most likely continue after the poor bastard was fired, but hey at least the company heard you. Small wages for employees? Consumers won't shop here unless we offer what they want for the cheapest price. Even when certain restaurants offered more transparency for why it costs more consumers complain about having to pay for such things as employee healthcare.

Fifty seven million over 22 years is pretty tame. Especially considering that the National Restaurant Association has forty thousand members. It would have only taken about seventy dollars a year per member to get to that total.

You make it sound like they're pocketing millions a week, when the typical profit margins for restaurants are less than 5% and max out at 10%.

It always amazes me how business owners are portrayed as greedy monsters instead of the pants pissing cowards they most likely are. If you need to raise the prices of your products to give your employees good wages, do it. And customers need to understand that better paid employees means higher prices.

Realistically? The number of people in the top tax bracket. There are less than a thousand reported in the US. Even if you give them an average of half a billion dollar incomes each it only adds up to around 5 billion dollars total. Not much. But, if you take the working population of the US and an average income of 30,000 dollars you get a total of 9 trillion dollars to work with. No matter how you work it there will always be more water in a shallow lake than a deep puddle.

And other ways to increase taxes on them sound equally attractive until you take a 80% hit on your 401k when you retire or your property taxes spike.

I'm not saying that the progressive income tax is illegal. I'm stating an increase on one bracket will also mean an increase on all brackets. And such things as raising property taxes or the capital gains tax will hurt others than those you want to pay.

No. I'm saying that increasing the taxes for a single bracket can't be done. If taxes for the top bracket increase the taxes for the lower brackets will increase as well

You missed my point. If taxes could be targeted to specific groups or people, politicians would increase taxes on their rivals and on possible revenue streams their rivals use.

Global economy. Nothing to prevent them from continuing to make a profit from a brand new tax haven country.

I wasn't talking about a flat tax. I was stating that if taxes increased for one part of society then it has to increase for everyone. Otherwise, whichever party is in power would increase taxes on the other party's registered voters.

It's hard to find even one thing that affects just one group of people. For example, increasing the Capital Gains tax will also impact retirees cashing in their retirement plans. Also, what's to stop them from just leaving the country and renouncing US citizenship when taxes get too burdensome?

Can't raise taxes for the rich exclusively in the US. The 16th amendments wording prohibits raising taxes for specific individuals or groups of people. It has to be that everyone pays more taxes or it violates the Constitution. So if any politician says they're going to make the rich pay their fair share, keep in mind that you're going to pay more too.

Re reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Truck drivers hours are federally regulated. We can't be on duty for more than 70 hours in an 8 day period. We also can't drive more than 11 hours a day and are required to wait ten hours before we can start driving again. To reset our weekly hours we are required to wait 34 hours before we can go on duty, though we do get hours back if we manage our hours well enough for them to rollback on the ninth day.

Try greater than 40%. A tip is for service provided directly to you. If the employer increases the servers wages by 20% then that's every hour they work and there may not be any customers for some of the servers shift.

That's not true. I've heard accounts of early servers who only made money off of tips and were expected to pay the restaurant a portion of their tips for the privilege of serving there. In fact the only way to get service was to tip them beforehand and how much you tipped determined the level of service you received. This tip for good service is just a myth that is an excuse to avoid tipping.

They're called tips because tips have certain legal protections, while fees are up to the discretion of the business to give to their employees. Trust me. That delivery fee that you pay Papa Johns goes toward liability insurance, software fees, and other incidentals. None of it goes to the driver. And always pre tip more than 5 dollars if you don't want to be the last delivery of 3.