tipping

He told me that climate experts have now given up hope of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the point that they had predicted might prevent the worst climate tipping points.

At the same time, there’s also a wave of restaurants nationwide slowly shifting away from tipping, opting instead to raise menu prices to support higher hourly employee wages.

Due to its prevalence in our everyday lives, it wasn’t surprising that tipping showed up on the ballot during this election, both literally — with a Massachusetts proposal to eliminate the tip wage that could serve as a model for other states — and more figuratively, as both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris signaled in their campaigns that they might support eliminating taxes on tips.

Both these suggested shifts to tipping culture are incredibly controversial, and the way voters responded to them also reveals just how complex and divided public opinion on the practice is — among both workers and customers.

Tipping in the United States has roots in the post-Civil War era, when wealthy Americans traveling to Europe returned with the habit of giving gratuities to workers in service positions.