> the cost is moved from the tip to the base salary.

But that's an argument against minimum wage, not an argument against tipping.

And no, it isn't simply that shift of payment. It also aligns the goals of the wait staff with that of the restaurant. Because when the wait staff has two employers - the restaurant and the customer - there will be conflicts about putting personal profit through tipping ahead of the restaurant's.

> and that benefits poorer people

Citation please?

Because the article quotes Jayaraman as saying:

> "even in places like New York and D.C., seventy percent of tipped workers are actually women, largely working at casual restaurants, like Applebees, IHOP , and Olive Garden, earning a median wage of $9 an hour when you include tips. These people suffer three times the poverty rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, use food stamps at double the rate, and, the worst part, suffer from the absolute worst sexual harassment of any industry in the United States. When you’re a woman living on tips—even if you’re making a lot of money on tips, which most women aren’t—you’re subject to the whims of the customer, and really encouraged by management to objectify yourself or subject yourself to objectification to make money in tips."

and quotes Porter as saying:

> Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work. Consider also the power imbalance between tippers, who are typically male, and servers, 70 percent of whom are female, and consider that the restaurant industry generates five times the average number of sexual harassment claims per worker. And that in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference.

It sounds very much like having the same minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped staff would directly and clearly benefit poor people, for the multiple reasons given.

While your argument is, well, hand-wavy.

When I had little money, I simply didn't go places which had tipping. It was either cheap fast food where no tipping was required, or I made my own. So I'm also struggling to understand how many poor people - as in, on food stamps, like the above mentioned restaurant workers - go places where tipping is expected, and don't tip.

Furthermore, there are plenty of stories about how black people are stereotyped as poor tippers. Eg, http://www.ebony.com/news-views/are-black-people-really-bad-... and http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2008/10/do-black-cu... . There's even wait staff who will give bad service to black customers. Quoting from a comment in the second link:

> It got to a point even the black waiters did not want to wait on fellow blacks because they knew they'd get stiffed. I got to a point I was so tired of being stiffed and putting up with their demands, I would put ciggerette ashes in their food or mix in food from the garbage cans with their food.

What you suggest - that poor people simply don't tip because they don't have money - means that obviously poor people (which are also disproportionately minorities) will get bad service just because the wait staff will believe they are going to "get stiffed."

Thus, I still find it hard to believe that a significant number of poor people are going to restaurants with tipping, and not tipping; because if they did so they would get this sort of horrible treatment by some of the waiters.

So, why not pay everyone a decent wage, and completely get rid of the social obligation to tip? Then poor people, and minorities, will be treated the same as middle class and rich customers.