We tend to jump around topics a bit while talking about tipping in America in this episode. To most Europeans and Australians, the American tipping norms are laughable if not downright a dishonest way to do business. We're conditioned to think that it's ok to "bribe" workers to provide us services that the business owner is naturally providing and profiting from; we're made to feel 'cheap' and unworthy of those services even after we've paid for it if we don't tip. Tipping in America is a scam, an arrangement if you will, between the government and the business, so that they can BOTH take advantage of the worker while making the 'customer' foot the bill. Here what we mean: when the government legislated around 1935 that it was ok to pay (tip earning) workers less than the minimum wage, and set a price for that lower-than-minimum wage, it was not to help the worker. It served two purposes. One, to allow the business owner to pay nothing to the worker (much like a slave owner), and two, to allow the government to collect taxes on those tips. And where did the tax come from? It came from that less-than-minimum wage that was "paid" to the worker. I first realized this in the 1980s, when as a Waiter, I would get 0 (zero) paychecks. Yes, an actual paycheck including a stub that said pay this dude zero...but it showed the taxes the government collected from the $2/hour I supposedly earned. The government got the $2, the business got free labor, and the customer was supposed to pay me if they felt like it.