Are we really asking what is fair all of a sudden?
Why is it fair that a textile worker in South Carolina made $18 an hour while a textile worker in Guatemala makes $1.50 an hour?
It’s the same clothing after all.
Wait, that’s why the textile industry collapsed in South Carolina.
Likewise, you change the way restaurants are run... you change and eventually shut down restaurants.
Now you have made it clear that you don’t like to eat at higher end restaurants, and that’s fine. But the way that wait staff is paid in the U.S. means they make more money that most wait staff in other countries.
And guess what? It’s all voluntary. No one is forced to eat at a restaurant that requires a gratuity. No one is forced to enjoy fine dining at all.
But the waiters and waitresses that work at higher end eateries would not be thrilled with your idea of what is “fair”. They would be looking for a new line of work as soon as they could and we would no longer have the best of the best in the wait staff game. Fine dining in the U.S. would suffer, and many restaurants would go out of business as poor service would drive customers away.
Then I guess we could all join you for a nice date at Golden Corral.
How do you reach that conclusion? If this was true, why do not see more people make careers out of waiting, which seems to be prevalent in other countries as well?
But the waiters and waitresses that work at higher end eateries would not be thrilled with your idea of what is fair. They would be looking for a new line of work as soon as they could and we would no longer have the best of the best in the wait staff game.
Then perhaps their employers should consider paying them more money, which is how it works in other jobs.
Fine dining in the U.S. would suffer, and many restaurants would go out of business as poor service would drive customers away.
This is a silly conclusion. As other posters have pointed out, there are plenty of fine restaurants in countries which do not practice tipping and they seem to be doing just fine.
“Fine Dining” is a bourgeois concept, FRiend, and the dictatorchip of the proletariat will not shed a tear when the last vestiges of it are driven from our glorious revolutionary democracy.