> If it switched to fixed hourly pay, they'd be taking a pay cut since there is no way their hourly pay would be $30/hr.

Why not? I live in a country with no tipping culture and we have no problem paying service industry workers this much.

Let me guess Switzerland? $30/hr there is less than $20/hr in the US adjusted for COL.

No, Australia.

As for cost of living, my first job was doing 20 hour weeks at a McDonald's as a teenager. It paid enough for me to live very comfortably just 5 minutes outside of a major city (>1mil population). Obviously that's not too relevant to the tipping discussion since fast food workers aren't typically going to get tipped anywhere, but it serves as a demonstration of the living conditions a developed country should be able to provide, and tipping is entirely non-existent here so it's clearly not necessary to ensure that those working in service industries are fairly compensated.

The amount of Americans I see casually mentioning that they need to work multiple jobs scares the crap out of me.

Australia pays $30/hr to wait staff?

And the COL still stands. $30/hr won’t get you far in Sydney.

Um..medium hourly income in the USA is $21 an hour or so. I live in a decently expensive state and skilled trades, managers, and various lower-tier technical people make $30 an hour, and that's double the state's upcoming minimum wage.

I really don't see how you pay them that much.

> I really don't see how you pay them that much.

But they're apparently already getting paid that much! Either people are drastically misrepresenting how much waitstaff take home in tips, or there's enough money in the economy to pay them that much.

I don't think they are getting paid that much. I think in general people exaggerate. Maybe at peak times it hits $30 an hour, but a lot of the week it can be dead or slow.

This is part of why we don't make sales based on commission in retail stores any more; usually sales in general aren't boing to be affected by service as much as volume of customers into the store. Same I bet w tips

It is a difference in who decides how much they’re paid. In a traditional business their pay is at the discretion of the business and thus in competition with what could be the business’s profits. Tips are inaccessible to the business, so they get paid more closely to what consumers are ok with paying. I’m probably paying more too because of being guilted into feeling like I must tip x% because I’m directly responsible for the person’s wages.

These two points mean there’s no guarantee a tipped wage would convert 1:1 into an hourly wage if we simply removed tipping, even if the value provided by the tipped employee stays constant.

> It is a difference in who decides how much they’re paid. In a traditional business their pay is at the discretion of the business and thus in competition with what could be the business’s profits.

I don't really see how this is any different to me going into an American restaurant today and having the waiter's pay be at the discretion of myself, and in competition with what could be my money. At the end of the day it's still a person deciding how much money to give the waiter, knowing that they can keep any that's left over.

> I’m probably paying more too because of being guilted into feeling like I must tip x% because I’m directly responsible for the person’s wages.

Entirely plausible, but I see eliminating this consequence of tipping to be a huge positive. If a significant portion of someone's pay relies on guilt, then clearly the actual service they're providing isn't worth what they're being compensated for.

You guys understand that the price of meals would go up to compensate for the lack of tipping right? You’re not simply removing the cash. That extra 20% or whatever is now baked into the price. And generous tippers can still leave their extra bit.

The change is, that by default everyone earns a fair wage.

you know that the actual minimum wage of someone who makes $30 or more in tips a month is $2.13 right? By law, if they don't make enough tips in a week to earn an effective wage of $7.25 an hour, the employer has to pay them that much.

this is all the employer actually has to pay. Everything else is the customer. Now imagine the employer has to pay $15 an hour. Thats 6+ times what they pay now if its a decently busy place.

You still think it's going to be baked into the price?

So...they put the prices up by 20% or whatever. By definition, the amount they'd raise would be enough to pay the staff the equivalent to the amount lost in tips. They don't need to maintain the same GP margin, as this is pure extra revenue.

I don't understand your confusion. The amount of money the customer pays doesn't change.

I'll give an example:

$8 item + $4 (50%) tip = $12

$10 item + $2 (20%) tip = $12

$12 item + $0 (0%) tip = $12

In any scenario, the wait staff's pay comes from the customer. All we are doing is, setting the price, such that you no longer calculate the tip. If the actual price doesn't actually change, you can bake in whatever you want.

Wait, if the employee gets their min wage covered by tips the employer pays less? That's even shadier than I thought. Is this in law? Wasn't a delivery company booed for that kind of behavior a while ago?

I think the experience is very different depending on where you work. Your friends are probably working at a relatively fancy restaurant or bar. There's no reason a place like that couldn't pay more to keep good staff if tipping went away. How many of your friends would want to work for tips if they were working at a diner in a small town?

Not sure why you're being downvoted, but this is absolutely true. Nobody likes tipping culture more than career waiters and bartenders. People are more inclined to part with their money when they can see the face who receiving it. This may not apply for online deliveries though.