Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/24/a-guy-a-beer-and-a-giant-tip.html
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Stories like this are nice to read and heartening in regards to individual peoples capacity for generosity, but this is utterly tragic at scale.
We should be paying people to stay home, capitalism be damned.
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" I’m hoping that man at least got himself a nice Edmund Fitzgerald porter"
I’ve sunk a few Edmund Fitzgeralds.
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Well, I don’t want to trigger any lawsuits, but these guys are headquartered in Toronto within cycling distance of my house.
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Tag line for the Edmund Fitz porter: “Goes Down Easy!”
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too soon, too soon!
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Exactly! It’s like those ‘feel good’ stories of someone being able to afford their kid’s medical bills because of generous go fund me donations. Of course we’re all glad to hear the ‘good news’ but… The system is so broken if we need to rely on donations to pay for children’s medical care.
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42,735%
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A mighty fine beer. I make sure to pick up a six pack or three each time I’m in PA (they don’t sell them in my part of MD).
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The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big tipper they called Gitche Gumee…
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I think 427.35% of 7.02 is 29.99. You meant 42735% there… but that’s a nice patron nonetheless.
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If private citizen does it it’s called generosity and morality.
If the government does it it’s called socialism (except for big business, that’s OK.)
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I wonder if they pool their tips.
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Nighttown won some major points with me for their decision to go on hiatus for a few months. Granted, their ability to do that is due to them owning the building, so they don’t have to worry about making rent on the space. Even though I’m not walking distance anymore, I’m looking forward to the day where I can pop back in for a show sometime. That place is an absolute treasure.
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Some people say they’d have made the whitefish pay if they’d put fifteen more pints behind ‘em.
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Not sure if they pool all tips, but it looks like at least this one will be shared, at least with the staff who were present. From the linked AP article:
Ring said the man wished him well and told him to share the tip with the four employees who were working brunch service.
(I was pleasantly surprised to find that answer in the article—especially considering that it’s a very short piece—because usually my burning questions go unanswered, and I’m left thinking They should know that people are going to want to know that!)
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I’m sure Clement Attlee would want me to point out that socialism and charity are different in kind, not in degree.
The right has always lurved to paint socialism as a system of bribes paid out by the government to the mob, both to smear the left and because (for once) they are projecting. In fact, handouts are a tool of right-wing governments. They do it for businesses all the time, but they also give handouts to regular people when it serves them transactionally. (Like Turmp putting his filthy name all over those stimulus checks, and very nearly getting reëlected on the back of it).
Lots of center-left types fall into the same trap, and want to give charity to the needy, which gives ammo to the right and salves the bourgeois conscience without really addressing anything. And hard-left types are often preoccupied with punishing the rich, which you could think of as “negative charity”.
But the kind of socialism that works, and that everyone likes in practice, is when economic support is framed as a right, not some dog treat for people to deserve or not deserve. That’s why FDR mythologised (and Attlee strongly endorsed) “Freedom from Want” as a fundamental pillar of the Allied moral case during and beyond WWII.
You don’t have to get everyone in Birkenstocks to make the case for socialism (in fact that’s counterproductive). The case is: if you don’t want to be invaded by poor and desperate countries, start by ensuring that you don’t have a poor and desperate country surrounding you on every side within your own borders.
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Exactly. Like Ralph Bucks in Alberta in the 2000s in which the Alberta Conservative party bought votes just before a global oil price collapse that destroyed the economy there. I’m still gobsmacked that people still somehow believe that conservative governments are good stewards of public funds.
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