JR>Do you think the US tipping culture has an effect on wages and expectations?
KG>This is, at best, a marginal issue - and one that isn't even relevant for a number of unionized positions.
But your citations use large hotels as an example and I used international experience as mine. Have you tried googling "effect tips US wages?" Seems to me that not everybody sees tips as a marginal issue wrt minimum wages.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1