The Practice of Tipping should be Stopped immediately.

I would like to counter each paragraph separately. "My opponent's arguments are generally that the businesses that hire the people these people don't pay them enough, and that they keep the extra profits. This is extremely flawed. First of all, my opponent acknowledges that the practice of paying the workers less allows for the service, usually food, to be cheaper that it otherwise would be. This actually lowers the profit. There is no real way that the business can create an extra profit through this system. " I never claimed that food prices were low because tipping subsidized them. I merely said that food prices would go up if employers were to grant a greater share of their profit to their employees. Businesses are accustomed to a certain amount of profit from the sale of their products. If they were suddenly forced to take on a new burden (such as providing a living wage to their employees) they would raise prices not because tipping subsidized them but because they would strive to maintain the profit margin they had become accustomed to. In other words they would pass on the new costs to the consumer instead of absorbing them themselves (this is not a bad thing). "Tipping also gives incentive for the waiter or waitress to be polite in serving the consumers. It relieves the burden of checking how well the staff is behaved to the people, who would be the best judges of quality for themselves. This creates overall efficiency in the system. " This is an unreasonable assumption. I worked at a fast food establishment for many years. Metrics other then the amount of tipping were used to judge the quality of my work. I was encouraged to be polite, to serve food quickly, and to reduce mistakes and I accomplished these tasks not because I was expecting a doggy treat in the form of a tip but because that was my job and I was getting paid a fair price in return for performing those duties. Most businesses judge their employees using metrics such as length of time cars wait in the drive-thru, and the amount of customer complaints. In addition performance reviews are conducted regularily to ensure that the quality of the work does not drop. My opponent assumes that if tipping were done away with a waiter would cease to be helpful or polite to his patrons because he would have no expectation of a tip to reward decent (not even exceptional! ) service. I would maintain that a well-paid waiter would want to be helpful. This "want" to be helpful could be because of a variety of reasons: 1) He is being paid a living-wage and doesn't want to loose his decent paying job because of poor performance. 2) Since the employer now treats him well the waiter has developed a sense of loyalty to the business and now makes a point of not disappointing the employer. If tipping were required as an incentive to encourage performance to rise above unacceptable then people such as technicians, doctors, mechanics, janitors, fast food workers, writers, assembly line workers, etc. .. . would be performing appallingly. However if tipping is not required for good performance (as it obviously is not) then why tip a certain segment of the population? Why not use the same methods of metrics to judge their performance as we do to every other profession?