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matthewowen

As a point of information: there is no reduced minimum wage for tipped workers in California.

Wait staff etc must still receive full minimum wage in addition to any tips they receive.

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I don't think that changes the expectations on the waitstaff side, or the sense of obligation on the tippers' side.

The mountain that needs to be climbed here is about narrative/social norms, not real economics.

Unfortunately I think that bigger than shifting social norms will be shifting customer price expectations. If you kill tipping, expect wages to go up, even in CA, as staff expect (and perhaps legitimately require) a certain level of income, regardless of origin.

It's a little like subsidized gas. The US has been underpaying for gas for so long that I've got no idea what political martyr would try to put that cat in the bag. When a market distortion lasts so long it becomes part of the social fabric, it's real hard to just kill off.

I'd love to hear about times countries have been able to pull this off at scale.

Norway and Singapore tax the crap out of cars and are still doing fine.

While I fully support taxing the crap out of cars, Singapore and the USA are hardly comparable. It's the third most densely populated country on earth, and you can walk the circumference of the entire island in about a day. Not even factoring in the comprehensive public transit..

This can't be stressed enough. Large swaths of the US population would immediately become immobile. I think OP has never lived and worked in a rural area, say 30 miles outside of the nearest town, where survival depends on your ability to transport yourself.

Great point!

Except that the population density of the US is almost double that of Norway. (We definitely have our share of rural areas...)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

The density people live at is the interesting figure.

Of course it's quite high in the US, what with the population being concentrated on the coasts.

In a way, the invention of the automobile made our lives worse. It meant grocery stores and services could be placed further and further away, stretching out areas rather than condensing them.

Norway and Singapore didn't just switch from large subsidies to large tax. The problem isn't that a country can't function without subsidizing gas. The problem is that people who are used to the status quo will be pissed off when you interfere with their god-given right to cheap gas.

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