The
debate about whether tipped workers should be forced to split their meager earnings with other restaurant workers bears vague resemblance to a reasonable debate. On the one hand, there are the tipped workers, a portion of whose income is derived from the capricious whims of an over-entitled (and occasionally sociopathic) public. On the other hand, there are the back-of-house workers whose wages are yet more paltry.
'Should the [comparatively?] well-off front-of-house staff be mandated to share with the back-of-house staff?' ask a class of people who claim to abhor what they are pleased to refer to as 'redistribution.' (We can pause briefly here to acknowledge the self-evident fact that
there is no such thing as 'redistribution.')
The reason I think this isn't a reasonable debate is that I don't think it's remotely reasonable to force any workers to earn any portion of their pay from tips. Workers' wages generally are already
constrained by the whims and fancies of their employers; there is nothing efficient about adding the whims and fancies of the customer base to the calculation. We've got enough work to do to make labor markets efficient; this latest attempt at wage theft is simply several steps backwards.
