Tips are so American

Think of this relation: consumers paying actual producers for doing the work removing the middle man. For example, the restaurant and food service industry is less inclined to pay higher wages, i.e. a living wage, because the laborer's wage, (the server, the barista, the bartender), is supplemented by a secondary income: tips. These tips are provided through a voluntary (and American) custom that I believe is a relic remnant of pre-industrial times. In that era, as my history books have told me, the producer and consumer interacted through personal relationships and perhaps even friendship, (e.g. The town blacksmith responsible for producing swords for the local knights).* Why is it that American's tip their employees and people of other countries such as the French see such an action as rude? I have heard that in French culture tipping the waiter is seen as an insult because it implies that the institution the waiter is working for is unable to pay the waiter adequate wages.

Does that mean that American custom to tip comes from the belief that the fact that restaurants are unable to pay their employees adequately is bad and should be corrected by a supplemental boost? I do not think so. While I am sure this question has already been discussed and solved, I will continue regardless. I believe that American culture, (obviously?), has an extreme distaste for the middleman and for big government, which could stem from its small town agricultural roots. In addition the concept of tipping could be propagated by the American belief that anyone can rise to the top if they put enough effort. As in tipping is a sort of incentive for increasing competition regardless of the fact that the person is in a dead end job to no where.

Whereever tipping may come from, the custom has not died and has even prospered. Tipping cans/buckets are seen everywhere ranging from the Megacorporate Starbucks Coffeeshop to the independently owned San Diego 24/hour Mexican fast food restaurant. Since I cannot learn without researching, which I am not about do, where the origins of tipping have came from, I'd rather speculate as to whether or not there are different types of political tipping mentalities. As in a difference in tipping styles between Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals (The American usage not European). There is a book titled: Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff that tries to relate political philosophies of Liberals and Conservatives to two models: the nuturing family, and strict father models, respectively. Tipping therefore could actually be perpetuated by two different thought processes. The strict father tipper who tips on a basis of service and lowers the tip accordingly with 20% being superb service and going down from there. Then there are those nuturing parent types who give 20% no matter what unless the service is out of the ordinary horrible. While I usually fall in the latter category, depending on my mood, what type of tipper are you?