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Antiwork

The paradox of American tipping culture (and why we’ll never shut up about it)

I want to preface this by saying I'm not American, but I'm taking a combined sociology degree and find “tipping culture” fascinating. From my understanding (please correct me if I've interpreted things wrong!) workers are not paid enough to get by without tipping. So we should raise the minimum wage for the hospitality sector. But a company will not raise the minimum wage when someone else is tipping an employee to make up the difference In effect: Tipping discourages a raise in wages. But you need a raise in wages to eliminate tipping. These two points make the conversation on tipping impossible to have, because it is founded on a paradoxical basis. I believe it's also why every conversation on this sub about tipping ultimately turns into a cesspool with 0 ways to positively affect change, because pro-tipping or anti-tipping, the corporations are the ones holding the cards. War is…


I want to preface this by saying I'm not American, but I'm taking a combined sociology degree and find “tipping culture” fascinating.

From my understanding (please correct me if I've interpreted things wrong!) workers are not paid enough to get by without tipping. So we should raise the minimum wage for the hospitality sector. But a company will not raise the minimum wage when someone else is tipping an employee to make up the difference

In effect: Tipping discourages a raise in wages. But you need a raise in wages to eliminate tipping.

These two points make the conversation on tipping impossible to have, because it is founded on a paradoxical basis. I believe it's also why every conversation on this sub about tipping ultimately turns into a cesspool with 0 ways to positively affect change, because pro-tipping or anti-tipping, the corporations are the ones holding the cards. War is peace and all that.

The best thing I think we can do is have awareness of how good capitalism is at forcing in-fighting between the exploited. It is only then that we can have productive conversations about where to go next.

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