Re:To tip or not to tip?
by acjohnson55 on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @06:38PM
(#9187932)
But there's already a free market for labor, wage floor notwithstanding. Anybody who's paying above the minimum wage for servers already has to compete on wages. And they have to compete with other industries as well. Tipping simply allows the equilibrium base wage (and even the wage floor itself, by policy) to be lower than it would otherwise be.
Plenty of study shows that generosity or level of service have very little to do with tipping on the whole. People typically tip based on personal habit relative to their interpretation of local custom. (I can try to find sources if you doubt this.) I don't think there's any reason to believe that customers don't take gratuity, and tax for that matter, into account when deciding when and where to dine out.
I'm not suggesting that the situation would be the exact same for every server if tipping went away. Some would benefit, others would suffer. On the whole, it would be less discriminatory. But I don't see why we would expect to see a macro change in waitstaff income.
Plenty of study shows that generosity or level of service have very little to do with tipping on the whole. People typically tip based on personal habit relative to their interpretation of local custom. (I can try to find sources if you doubt this.) I don't think there's any reason to believe that customers don't take gratuity, and tax for that matter, into account when deciding when and where to dine out.
I'm not suggesting that the situation would be the exact same for every server if tipping went away. Some would benefit, others would suffer. On the whole, it would be less discriminatory. But I don't see why we would expect to see a macro change in waitstaff income.