@salixsericea Well quickly, I suspect this is one of those cases where The Guardian won't really understand American culture enough to really report comprehensively on the issue.

In particular they might not be aware of the supposed rules that tips included should amount to minimum wage, or the common under reporting of cash tips to tax authorities. It's a mess.

But yes, not only does the world know how ridiculous the tipping thing is, a whole lot of the US knows as well. Unfortunately it's one of those things like daylight savings time where the institutional inertia and complex interests at play prevent us from really changing course.

Personally I think the no tax on tips proposal is a terrible, terrible idea, only serving to further ingrain tipping when we need to be moving away from it for the good of workers, and that's not even getting into corruption, the way it would encourage more and more pay to be moved over into tipping dishonestly.

But, the people pushing for that idea aren't the brightest. So, there we go.