People choose to work as waiters, no one is being forced into it. That indicates that pay is adequate to ensure a supply of people willing to work under those conditions. They may want to be paid more, we all do. But they accept less.

Um. I didn't get forced into it at gunpoint, it's true, but I sure as hell wouldn't be slinging pasta for tips if I could find a job that would a) give me health care and b) existed.

Well what would make a successful labor market for waiters, then?

Consistent pay, health care, lack of turnover....

Health insurance would be nice too since its employer-based in this country.

Dr. Krugman says that would be the best way to get(and keep) our economy on track. He used a lot more words than that.

One in which their wage is not dependent on the whims of the people they break their backs to serve.

Consistent pay, health care, lack of turnover....

But then isn't this true of all jobs? Restricting the example to at-will jobs, couldn't I just say that the job market for lawyers needs statutory or political intervention because the health care is expensive and sucks, the hours are long and inconsistent, 98% of associates leave in four years, pay is partly dependent on the whims of partners, and qualifying for the job costs $100K+?

Here's the thing: servers work for the restaurants. They do NOT work for the patrons. Patrons should NOT be directly responsible for the livelihood of the servers. It's the restaurant's responsibility to properly pay ALL staff. Why are food servers different than someone who sells clothing? We don't tip the person who folds the sweaters at the Gap and who helps us figure out sizes and rings us up. There might be a commission structure, sure, but it's invisible to the patron.

And why in the hell should a server's wage be paid by a patron, on the basis of how much that patron consumes? It's ridiculous. The server who gets a budget-minded couple is going to take home less of a tip (despite the percentage, if the couple is on a budget, the food cost will be less, thus a lesser tip) than the server who gets lucky and serves a couple who can spend more. It's a completely ludicrous set-up.

And are you seriously comparing the situation of a first year associate at a law firm with that of a server? That's almost too much of a parody for me to even fathom.

There are restaurants with flat service charges -- Per Se is one example -- but I think the supply of waiters and waitresses indicates that the market is working fine. I mean, slave labor is a bit hyperbolic.

True, but the supply and demand of/for wait staff manages to equalise in countries (such as Australia) where tipping isn't the custom too.

Also note as a technical point, market failures (where they occur) don't necessarily (or even usually) result in a disequilibrium between supply and demand. Monopolies, for instance, still result in an equilibrium market. American health care is kind of crippled with adverse selection problems, it still finds an equilibrium pricing point.

I don't think there's a market failure here, but I do think the 'tipping risk' (if I can call it that) isn't falling on the party most able to manage it. (Service staff can influence it, and perhaps should be partly exposed to its vagaries, but there are also going to be service variations that aren't about the wait staff and customer variation that isn't about anyone.)

Finally, as one with experience in both systems, I'd say the customer also bears part of the cost. The service I get here in Australia is perfectly fine compared to the American, but I also have to pull these mathematical calculations at meal end. Here I don't have to, and still have the explicit option to tip to reward good service if I feel it's warranted.

So yes, it's not any dire sitution, but I do think that the current arrangement sees the owner pass some of his responsibilities onto the customer, and some of his risk onto the wait staff. I think that's not the best arrangement.

There's also an incentive for the restaurant owner to put other tasks on the waiters, such as table clearing, that have traditionally gone to non-wait staff (i.e., busboys, or whatever they're called these days) because busboys get minimum wage and waiters get a lot less. That means there's less time for the waiter to provide good service to the customers on whom they're waiting (thus likely driving down tips) and less of a market for busboys.

Fay, I meant to comment on the "you must obviously be black" comment as well -- I am also surprised it went apparently unnoticed.

I didn't see the black and steak with ketchup thing... that is really bad.

There's also an incentive for the restaurant owner to put other tasks on the waiters, such as table clearing, that have traditionally gone to non-wait staff (i.e., busboys, or whatever they're called these days) because busboys get minimum wage and waiters get a lot less.

I think that incentive thing is true for many, many things. Somehow someone got the idea that they could make even more money if they didn't have enough workers. For example, when I was a teenager working in a grocery store we always had ample cashiers, two full-time people to take groceries to the cart and bag, stockboys who could bag and take groceries out at night, bottleboys who just did bottle returns, carts and occasionally helped on the service desk, and service desk people. This is in addition to the department staff, managers, deli, meat, produce, etc. The emphasis was really on making sure that there were enough people there that the customer was always helped, and if there were no customers, you stocked the candy or cigarettes or whatever. The people who made the schedule would get in trouble if there weren't enough people on

By the time I left, there were no baggers, no bottleboys (and man, let me tell you that doing the service desk by yourself and then having a 1200 bottle order come in was something else), and the bare minimum of cashiers. It was a very different culture.