Personally I would love to see the restaurant service model in Australia implemented here in the US:
- workers paid a decent wage
- tipping not expected
- tax included in price
Aka price you see is the price you pay
- workers paid a decent wage
- tipping not expected
- tax included in price
Aka price you see is the price you pay
Prices in Australia are more evenly distributed.
In the US high COL cities like San Francisco have much higher prices than butt fuck nowhere Omaha. In Australia there is still a delta but it's much much smaller.
As a result prices in high COL Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney are generally cheaper than the equivalent SF/LA/NY prices but rural areas in Australia are much more expensive than rural areas in the US.
Not requiring tipping but any model that allows pay to scale to volume would account for this.
We see something similar where I live, restaurants are adding a %age based fee to go direct to kitchen staff. In my state tips can’t be split with BOH staff. This allows the owner to pay the BOH stadf more but scale it to actual volume
The history of tipping in the United States is that it was used to pay Black people less or not at all after the abolition of slavery. White service workers would get big tips and Black servers wouldn’t.
This pay gap persists to this day: https://www.outtraveler.com/eat-drink/2021/2/06/black-worker...
The one thing the tip model does help with is providing a “congestion fee” of sorts. A server in the joints in describing making really good money - if the restaurant was paying say $50/hr it wouldn’t be feasible as patronage at the restaurant is very spiky and margins are low. This allows restaurants to effectively pay more during busier periods and less during quiet periods.
I suppose the same could be done by scaling pay rate by shift.
(Nicer restaurants also replace their menus regularly, but for different reasons: presenting a spotless and seasonal/rotating menu is part of their value proposition.)
I know it isn't often in Europe because I maintain the VAT tables at work for our Europe sales so have to deal with updating when it changes. We sell in 28 countries there, each with its own independent VAT, and since 2015 there have only been around 8 changes among all 28.
Also in Europe VAT is per country.
In the US sales tax at a given location is the sum of state sales tax, county sales tax, city sales tax, and possibly even special tax district sales taxes.
The state rate usually doesn't change often, although it isn't as stable as Europe VAT rates. County and city rates aren't as stable, and there usually isn't coordination between the changes so if the state, county, and city are all going to raise rates in the next year they could easily end up each doing so in a different quarter.
PS Also consider that the other counties have been able to print the menus regardless the tax fluctuations. It doesn't seem to be a problem.
No tipping? No, that's social.
Workers paid a decent wage? I'm pretty sure that servers would claim they're not paid a decent wage. Australian minimum wage is AU$23.23, or USD$15 - USD$16.37 using PPP.
Cost of living comparison:
Sydney vs San Jose, CA
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
For an example I'm familiar with in my family, consider:
You're paid $100,000 but your bank account only sees $60k, the rest is taxes but taken off by your employer.
vs
You're paid $100,000 and your bank account sees all $100k. At tax time, you need to write a check to the government for $40k.
People get a lot more angry about writing the $40k check. It was _theirs_ in a way that the payroll taxes aren't. I've seen this personally when someone moves from employee to self-employed.
The same applies with sales taxes. Most people don't look at the receipt, or if they do it's only to check that the amount taken matches the label.
Do people get angry at gas taxes, or the oil companies?
Taxes per l of fuel is 44.2c + 10% GST in 221.4c/l. Taxes are ~30% of the price?
https://www.mynrma.com.au/cars-and-driving/fuel-resources/we....