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In embracing the elimination of taxes on tips, a policy proposal recently promoted by Donald Trump, Kamala Harris is neutralizing any advantage Trump might have gained from it—at little to no cost to her own campaign.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Low Risk, Some Reward
In Las Vegas on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered one of the first policy promises of her presidential campaign. She threw her support behind a concept that hadn’t reached the mainstream until earlier this summer, when Donald Trump proposed it as part of his own platform. Now, in quite the unlikely alliance, both major party candidates are boosting the idea of eliminating taxes on tips for workers.
Trump claimed that he was inspired to pursue the idea after speaking with a Las Vegas waitress. After he introduced the proposal in June, his party quickly embraced it, and the policy was included in the platform released by the Republican National Committee last month. The “no taxes on tips” idea that both sides are now backing has clear flaws. For one, economists are skeptical of the concept; it’s not yet clear how either campaign would implement the policy and at what scale, but some versions of the idea could lead to significant losses in federal revenue. Plus, the idea would likely be challenging both to pass in Congress and to enforce among businesses.
But as a piece of campaign rhetoric, it sounds pretty compelling: As my colleague David Graham wrote after Trump first mentioned the idea, “Even if it seems questionable, who wants to be on the record voting against cutting taxes for waiters and cabbies?” The rollout of the proposal, David noted, was “a typically Trumpian move: completely detached from expert opinion on the left or right but with an intuitive appeal and political edge.” Now Harris is seeking to get in on that appeal—and in doing so, she’s dulling any political edge the proposal might have given her opponent.
Trump, predictably, blasted Harris for copying his idea, accusing her of backing it for “Political Purposes” (capitalization his). But beyond that critique, Harris seems to have little to lose from boarding the “no tax on tips” train.” There’s no meaningful electoral constituency against the idea. Meanwhile, the Culinary Union, a powerful force in the electorally key state of Nevada, has been a longtime opponent of “unfair taxation”; the union, which had endorsed Harris before she backed the idea, celebrated Saturday’s news. “It looks to me like a situation where the electoral benefits of interest-group pandering obviously outweigh the costs, even if the policy is questionable on the merits,” my colleague Gilad Edelman, who covers economic policy, told me. (The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to my request for comment. A Harris campaign official told NPR that her proposal was distinct from Trump’s—although neither campaign has laid out exactly what their proposals would look like in practice—and that she would fight for it alongside an increase to the minimum wage.)
Trump wasn’t wrong in noticing that Harris’s move seems guided by political interest. But her support of the policy may not actually swing many votes her way. Advocates for tipped workers aren’t all passionate supporters of the policy; some argue that a higher minimum wage would be a much more meaningful step to improve the lives of service workers. And although some tipped workers are in favor of the policy, even those who stand to benefit from it may not vote with the proposal in mind. That voters would choose a candidate who is offering to put money in their pockets makes sense on an intuitive level, but a large body of research suggests that Americans really do vote for what they feel is in the best interest of the country, not just for what will improve their personal finances, Jon Krosnick, a political-science professor at Stanford, told me. Plus, now that both candidates are supporting the idea, Krosnick argued, they each lose any “potential advantage” of the policy with voters.
Harris’s calculus here seems as simple as “low risk, possible reward.” By aligning with this proposal, she can weaken a Trump-campaign tactic, keep the Culinary Union happy, and signal to working Americans that she’s focused on them. Harris is set to release more details of her policy platform, focused on the economy, later this week. But right now, as David noted yesterday, her policy priorities remain hard to pin down, and this proposal doesn’t change that.
Related:
Today’s News
- Tim Walz held his first solo campaign event in Los Angeles, speaking at a convention for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
- A 4.4-magnitude earthquake struck near Los Angeles yesterday.
- A wildfire in Greece has forced thousands of residents in the vicinity of Athens to evacuate, and continues to spread.
More From The Atlantic
Evening Read
My Criminal Record Somehow Vanished
By Mark O’Brien
Sixteen years ago, during my last semester of law school, I caused a drunk-driving crash that killed my girlfriend. I pleaded guilty to negligent manslaughter and faced up to a decade in prison, but thanks to my girlfriend’s family’s forgiveness and whatever unearned sympathy I received as a middle-class white man, my sentence amounted to a few months in jail followed by several years on probation. Considering the sentences faced by many, I’d been very lucky.
Ever since, I’ve been among the 80 million Americans living with a criminal record and all its consequences. I’ve fantasized about what my life would be like if my record simply vanished. Not long ago, it sort of did—one more instance of a system that’s not just unjust but also capricious and poorly administered.
Culture Break
Watch. In HBO’s Industry, Gen Z reveals itself to be just as money-obsessed as the corporate raiders of Wall Street.
Read. Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, is a satire of America’s obsession with identity.
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