What difference is there to you, then, between “employer pays a reasonable living wage to their employees but raises the prices of the food a bit to accommodate” and “employer pays poverty wages, forcing the customers to pay their employees for them and forcing tax payers to pay up when people earning poverty wages inevitably rely on government programs to simply survive?” If tipping is mandatory, the only people that benefit is the employer since they can simply double dip - spend less money on payroll AND force the customer to make up for your lack of willingness to pay competitive wages. Yes, under current law, employers are supposed to make the difference if tips can’t cover at least minimum wage, but that’s not enforced nearly as much as it should be, which puts the onus on the workers being exploited in the first place, and even then minimum wage in this country is embarrassingly unfit for supporting anybody.

The more important question to ask is “why am I expected to pay an employee when the money I already give to a business should cover wages in the first place?”

I’m a tipped employee for my day job. I make a decent base pay, but the tips make up for that in spades during busy seasons. I’ve bought my current car with tip money. Despite this, I fully support getting rid of tips if it meant my livelihood wouldn’t be a gamble depending on factors outside my control, and especially if it meant fewer people had to rely on government assistance and could better provide a livelihood for themselves.