Originally Posted by
kebosabi
This is why I like restaurants in Japan.
They offer great service that puts most waiters and waitresses in the US and Europe to shame and they don't ask for tip; instead they even consider tipping as an insult. ^
Why can't the US be more like this?
If you want a system where people tip little or nothing, restaurants will have to pay their staff more than $2-3/hour. The restaurants would then have to raise their prices to compensate for the higher wages.
Your total cost would be the same. The "capitalist incentive" that is so engrained in American society would be removed from servers and their performance, and until the US develops a different ethic, wherein people do their best even if they are not working for a tip, things will not change.