The Crowd Has Spoken: Abolish Tipping in America, and the Tip Jar Is Trembling

Here is the verdict, delivered with the gravity such matters deserve: the crowd wants to abolish tipping in America. Somewhere a server is gripping a card reader, a diner is staring at a screen demanding a gratuity for a bagel, and a nation is asking itself whether dignity should depend on the generosity of strangers.

The history is richer than the grumbling suggests. According to Wikipedia's entry on gratuity, tipping was imported from Europe in the 1850s and 1860s, and until the early 20th century many Americans considered it inconsistent with an egalitarian, democratic society. Six states even made it illegal, the first in 1909 and the last repeal in 1926, though enforcement was problematic.

The modern arrangement is no tidier. By the same source, the U.S. Department of Labor allows a tipped employee who receives more than $30 per month in tips to be paid $2.13 per hour in direct wages, with the employer expected to cover any shortfall below the federal minimum. Studies cited there suggest tips can be discriminatory or arbitrary, varying with age, sex, race and appearance, and only tenuously related to service quality. Meanwhile, tipflation has carried the request into more industries, helped by payment screens that prompt for a tip.

Now the crowd. On Morfi, an opinion market where people back their views with money, "Abolish tipping" stands at 60% consensus, while "Keep tipping" trails at 40%. That is conviction, not a headcount, but it is a clear lead in a straight two-way fight. So far 81 unique traders have put $151,597 behind their opinions, and trading opened less than a day ago, so this is a first draft of history rather than a final ruling.

My own view, offered as opinion and with the full awareness that I am being preachy: the crowd is right. A free market works when prices are honest, and a wage that depends on a stranger's mood, or on a worker's appearance, is a rights problem dressed up as folk charm. Montesquieu would not have tolerated it. Put a living wage in the menu price, let the customer see the real cost, and let the worker bargain with the employer rather than beg at the table. Compromise is available, and I am optimistic enough to say so.

What to watch: whether "Keep tipping" rallies as the first-day enthusiasm cools, and whether the defenders of the tradition make a stronger case for it than nostalgia. Join the market on Morfi, back your opinion, and settle it before the next payment screen settles it for you.