OK, let's just go through and point out the obvious problems with the points they make:
That's one hell of a lot better than what I make off of it. And, I'm the one shouldering all the risk.
No one cares about percentages, they care about take home pay. There's tons of staff sharing that 19%, the owner(s) get 100% of whatever profits the business makes. If I'm an investor in Dominos I'm only going to make a few percent a year from profits, but those lazy employees are going to get wayyy more than that.
Even if the business is losing money, the tipped employees still make a percentage of gross sales.
That's the difference between owners and employees. Any employee will still get to take home a salary even if the business is losing money. It's kind of eff'd up that this owner is directly comparing their compensation to their employees and coming away with the impression that somehow the employees are getting away with something.
If customers do not pay at least 100% of the costs of a business to operate that business closes.
Ok, so that's how every business works.
Sales tax [...] Insurance Premiums [...] Payroll taxes
Yeah, there would be additional costs, but that's how every other business works. If tipping is basically free money without taxes then why doesn't this owner also tip their accountants? Why not pay less for food and just tip the farmers and the delivery drivers to make up for it, since it's tax free money for everyone?
Nearly every other profession accepts that there's taxes and regulations that go along with having a steady and predictable salary.
At the higher price point, volume will decrease. [...] while customer A has been eliminated from your market.
So the person who wasn't tipping, or tipping extremely low, won't come anymore? How does that affect someone who depended on tips? It's much better to eliminate that person upfront, from the server's perspective, than to have to put in all the work and essentially not get paid at the end of the meal. This is only bad for the owner. The labor lost in this situation is labor that wasn't getting paid for anyways, or paid at a below market rate.
Tips are federally protected wages. I can't touch that money.
Oh yeah, like there's never been any cases of tipped employees getting screwed over by their employers.
Flat wages instead of tipping uncouples tipped employees wages from inflation.
Right, if you never give your employees even basic cost of living raises then yeah, their wages wouldn't keep up with inflation.
I'd rather be off on the weekends!
Do you think that every other profession that works weekends is just filled with idiots?? People who didn't realize they could just choose to take the weekend off if they felt like it. People are paid to work when they're needed. If not a lot of people want to work a certain day, when there's a ton of business, then pay people more to make it worth their time. This hopefully happens with tips, but it's definitely not a guarantee
TL;DR The tipping system creates
a system where I can let more risk fall on my employees, they have to deal with fluctuating income and insecurity, unlike just about every other profession. In exchange they get to make more thanks to some mild tax fraud and I don't have to do as much work to make sure that people are paid fairly.