The US is, according to Wikipedia, among a small minority of countries in which a majority of people drink fluoridated water. Various European countries have discontinued doing so. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation>
Is this real?
As an American, I wish we didn't do this, but it's a collective action problem that's very hard to solve.
The reason I wish we didn't tip is because I think the list price should reflect the true cost of whatever I'm buying. I think that is more honest, encourages healthy competition, and is a pleasant consumer experience.
I was really glad when the DOT forced airlines to include taxes and fees in ticket prices in 2012, and wish there were a similar law/regulation that applied to all commerce. (And yes, I realize this is hard, given the incredible complexity of U.S. tax laws in a bazillion different—and often overlapping—jurisdictions.)
> $2.65/hr+
Bottom line, if your business can't afford to pay its people a living wage, then it can't afford to operate.
(Well, they also make espresso drinks and made-to-order deli sandwiches, so I guess it's appropriate to tip if you order those.)
I disagree. I tip for delivery, and for table service. Not for a service that does not require leaving the counter.
In my area, pizza delivery drivers (read: not DoorDashers, etc. I am not sure what they make since I refuse to use those services) make about $12 - $15/hour and get paid for mileage (usually between $0.50 - $0.62 per mile.) I'm not seeing a reason to tip them. They are making well above minimum wage in my State, unlike the restaurant servers/bartenders that only just barely crested $4/hour as of 2025. The latter is in a position to rely on tips, the former is far from it.
I ask because we don't seem to have an established "hard line" on when tipping is appropriate in the United States, and when it is not. This extremely fuzzy understanding is allowing companies like DoorDash, coffee shops, etc to under pay their staff by off-loading part of the cost to the customer, which makes your $7 latte cost $10, or whatever. It's steamy bullshit and needs to be shoveled into the bin.
If we had a hard line on when tipping is justified, we'd quickly see a change in the other direction. I've always felt that the hard line should be "if you are making less than minimum wage, then tipping is justified." That's it. No soft maybes, no washy-washy justifications.
That being the case, if a barista (avg $15/hour in the US) is not happy _without_ the tips, then they have two options: demand more from their employer, or find a different job that pays better. Either way, the employer is left to consider either raising wages to keep people satisfied, or doing the same just to keep people in the door and stay in business. The barista is, in essence, the face of the company. They do the work the customer sees, which makes them important to the sustainability of the company. Ergo, the company needs to put more resources in the barista's pocket to ensure quality work.
It sort of blows my mind why everyone else in the US does not think this way, but I have tried to dissect my own stance on tipping (from the standpoint of having spent nearly a decade working front-of-the-house in restaurants), and I'm really having trouble poking holes in my own logic. So, I'm always interested to hear other people's takes on why they tip the way they do.
This is the problem. You basically said "we do it like this because that's the way we've always done it," which is the weakest form of justification for anything.
Rain, snow, etc...do you tip the person who delivers your mail? They do it in an LLV (a rather treacherous vehicle with little to no climate control) or on foot, but nobody tips them. When the pizza delivery person applied for the job, they did so knowing they would have to deliver in bad weather, but somehow we reach the conclusion that the responsibility of making sure that driver is being paid adequately for their risk and efforts is shifted to the customer, rather than than their employer.
Now, I should clarify that despite my years of restaurant service where my $2.65/hour paycheck existed nominally for the sole purpose of covering taxes (hence, my "take home" pay coming directly from the customers to my pocket), that I am in the camp of abolishing tipping altogether. Raise the wages of all service workers to a livable wage, which all these companies can certainly afford, and we'd be done with it. But I know that's a huge leap, so we need to take baby steps to get there.
Having a well-defined notion of which positions should be tip-based and which should not is the first baby step.
I guess what I am getting at with my other comments is that we do not have a clear understanding of said appropriateness, and thus, we, the consumer, along side the food service worker, are generally taken advantage of by the companies that perpetuate the idea while said companies are off the hook for labor costs.
Now, before someone (if anyone is still following this thread) chimes in with "but if the restaurants pay the bartenders/servers a full wage, the food and drinks would be way more expensive!" I am here to tell you "travel more." I have been to many other countries where tipping is not at all a thing, and the food costs about the same as it does in the US.
When you walk into a restaurant in the US, you're getting ripped off. The dish you just paid $16US for cost them about $3 to make, including wage. It's not like the cooks are prepping one dish at a time, or the servers are only taking one table at a time...not to mention most restaurants in the US are using frozen, prepared ingredients that they are really just heating up or re-hydrating. Overhead costs like electricity and rent? A drop in the bucket compared to what small businesses have to deal with. The staff is making bare-minimum wages as it is while the parent companies and investors are making bank. That money from your $16US meal goes up, but very little of it actually comes back down.
Tipping exists because greed at the top exists and its unfair to both food service workers and the customers, but we've been at it so long that it's been normalized. And now it's spreading to other industries, like retail and online sales.
It's pretty nice to go to a cafe, pay a fair price, and not be guilted into 20% extra by a PoS machine.
Are you worried the machine will think less of you if you don't tip? Where does guilt come into it?
https://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-30229-portland-voters-so...
To the extent this is a polarized left-right issue, it's only recently and only because everything is polarized right now.
The top 10 most fluoridated states went 5/5 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Kentucky, Minnesota, Illinois, North Dakota, Virginia, Georgia, South Dakota, Maryland, Ohio, and South Carolina. Hardly a blue wall.
The bottom 10 least fluoridated states with 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Louisiana, Alaska, Utah, New Hampshire, and Mississippi. Hardly a red wall.
The bottom three least fluoridated states are all hardcore blue: Hawaii, New Jersey, and Oregon.
I just don't see any evidence here that this has been a left-right polarized issue until this year. The distribution of fluoride by political leanings is just too random.
AFAIK, HFCS is one of the worst offenders.
HFCS is not worse than sugar unless you're consuming such an outrageous amount that the fructose leads to a fatty liver (which does happen). But if you're consuming that much HFCS, it's only a small amount more of sucrose to yield the same outcome, as of course both have loads of fructose.
The one viable argument to vilify HFCS is simply that it's so convenient and inexpensive (courtesy of massively subsidized corn production) that it led to many more products having added sugars. But people who carefully pour over ingredients looking for HFCS, but treat sugar as wholesome, are usually operating on ignorance.
In the body it's literally all the same with minor variations in ratios. Indeed, the revered Mexican coke with cane sugar...the sucrose is broken down to component glucose and fructose in the acidic environment [1], exactly as happens with HFCS variants, and it would have been the moment it hit your digestive tract anyways.
There is zero scientific justification for the weird focus on HFCS. Yes, glucose and grossly excessive amounts of fructose are a serious problem. Especially in forms that rapidly get absorbed and go off like a glucose bomb -- our bodies are not adapted to the extremely rapid intake of glucose forms of food we eat now, including ultra-processed foods fill with refined carbs.
The #1 source of glucose in most diets is white breads, rices and so on. White flour is 60-80% starch, while white rice pushes 90% starch. Starch is strings of glucose molecules, and indeed enzymes turn that starch to free glucose almost immediately when eaten. So from a glucose perspective flour is much worse than an equal amount of sugar.
And of course nutritive sweeteners in all their forms should be avoided. But table sugar isn't more wholesome or better than HFCS.
[1] - Fun video about the sucrose in Mexican coke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY66qpMFOYo
I live in New Zealand and my town doesn't put fluoride in the water but it seems like they'll be made to do so fairly soon. I don't really care one way or the other from the point of view of ingesting the stuff, but I do consider it a bit of a waste of money. People who brush with toothpaste don't need this and people who don't are probably drinking too much soda. A more useful thing to do might be to subsidize toothpaste for people who can't / won't buy it for their kids.
I think every person in my social circles with any kind of illness or disability would be incredibly grateful for fluoridation, and it's not because of drinking too much soda