Why is it seen to be almost criminal not to tip in America but not the fact servers only get paid $2/$3PH? Why is the burden on the customer to contribute to a wage in such a large percentage?*
The restaurant can alternatively pay, say, $15/h to its servers and increase the prices on the menu to make up for the extra cost. That’s how it works in Europe and many other countries outside USA, where tipping is not a thing.
End of the day, it’s a free market, a business is free to play around with the various levers of revenues and costs to achieve an acceptable level of profit and consumers are free to take it or leave it.
I must hasten to add that I’m talking about a traditional business like restaurant, which follows the PLBS model to maximize shareholder value, and must accordingly make profits to stay in business – and not a VC-backed business, which can survive for a long time without making profits and can accordingly pay high wages to employees and offer low prices to customers without expecting them to tip its employees.
*: This is the original question I answered. I’m repeating it to help me make sense of my answer in case it’s moved to / merged with some other question that I didn’t answer.