Even in the minority of states that require minimum wage for waitstaff, waitstaff wages are adjusted in anticipation of tips. Service staff at good restaurants do not, as a rule, make minimum wage.

Other service professionals are paid a market wage. The bus driver, to continue with the particularly inept example used by this blog post, has in many localities also been compensated with a pension.

>>Even in the minority of states that require minimum wage for waitstaff, waitstaff wages are adjusted in anticipation of tips.

So you're saying that in California, Alaska, ..., that waitstaff can't still earn under minimum wage if they report tips? I don't think this is true, at least in CA.

>>Service staff at good restaurants do not, as a rule, make minimum wage.

Yes, they often make more. Not substantially more, but I know waiters who work at good restaurants and they can make 9 or 10 per hour, plus tips.

I don't get what you're saying about bus drivers. We should tip them, too?

My point -- and I think the orignal point of this whole thread -- is that we (consumers) should be aware what we are expected to pay. The final price should be the price we read on the menu. If you feel you have received exceptional service, then feel free to tip on top of the base price. Otherwise, if tips are compulsory, then the price should reflect this!

No, I'm saying that the minimum wage issue is still largely moot, because servers in good restaurants make much better than minimum wage. But the prevailing wage for any given restaurant, which is set by the market and not by the government, anticipates tips.

The blog post asked why we don't tip bus drivers. I've never tipped a bus driver. CTA bus drivers have pensions.

You are expected to tip 15%-20%. This is not hard information to come by. You should assume that tips are compulsory, unless something very bad happened with service. I've never undertipped for service issues.

> Other service professionals are paid a market wage. The bus driver, to continue with the particularly inept example used by this blog post, has in many localities also been compensated with a pension.

Which is the whole point, if pretty much every other service professional is paid a market wage, how are waiters different?

Waiters are paid a market wage that anticipates tips. Diners and restaurant owners are, along with servers, participants in the market. Just because the market for restaurant service is not organized exactly the way the market for bus drivers is doesn't make it not a market --- in fact, given the public pension situation in most US states, the market for restaurant service is far more efficient than it is for bus drivers.

City bus drivers are surly and, at least in the case of San Francisco, obviously not even properly incentivized to properly stop the bus and pick up passengers. But because you have virtually no role in determining the compensation of a bus driver, the fact that buses are driven poorly has little bearing on how much the drivers make; instead, public sector unions play the largest role in establishing wages.

And for non-public transit bus drivers (e.g charter buses) tipping is more common.