Yeah. A lot of that stuff tho, sort of references a time when cash tips were a more common thing. Like I said, nowadays so much is credit card tips that my paycheck is basically my entire income, and my pension and sick pay are comparable to someone at my income in a salary based field.

The way you have it set up there makes perfect sense and would not lower wages significantly at all for the industry were the mininum wage here also a living wage. As it stands in the US, in most places, the minimum wage at a 40 hour full time schedule for one month is relatively equal to the cost of a 1 bedroom apartment, leaving $0 for food or utilities. Were our minimum wage a more reasonable amount, however, server's wages would be competitive to what they are now under that system.

Assuming our minimum wage was enough for rent and utilities and food, something like $15/hr it is competitive.

Assuming $1000 in sales on a 6 hour shift, servers in America would make roughly $200 on tips and $12 in wages. Under a system with a fair minimum wage and a 10% service charge, servers would make $100 in service charges, and $90 in wages. It's honestly a pretty comparable method in terms of what staff makes, but less of the wages are pushed onto other consumers.

The reason that system can not work in America currently is because our minimum wage is only approximately half of the minimum amount of money needed for survival given a full time schedule. So our tip culture cannot be corrected until our wealth GINI coefficient is no longer amongst the bottom 10% of world economies (based on population). The easiest way to balance that, of course, is to raise the minimum wage to a minimum amount needed for survival.