> With that in mind, why are service staff singled out to receive tips? Partly for historical reasons. But also because it is one of the types of jobs where th

> With that in mind, why are service staff singled out to receive tips? Partly for historical reasons. But also because it is one of the types of jobs where this actually works. (Because customers can experience the result of the work directly and because the quality of the work is quite variable.) Other professions have other ways to provide incentive based salary. Lawyers, MD's, consultants, musicians or tech workers all have ways to (at least in some positions) profit from their own work directly. Construction workers may have team based rewards based on meeting deadlines, etc. Then there are a few professions where such rewards don't make sense, including those you bring up. These are generally jobs where the quality of the work is either not very variable, is hard to measure or does not connect to any revenue streams. For such jobs, fixed salaries are required. Typically, though, for most professions, fixed salary models tend to provide lower AVERAGE salary payments for those who opt for fixed salary. The risk involved in variable pay tends to lead to a risk premium benefitting the worker. And it may ALSO benfefit the employers, which in turn over time will result in an increased demand for workers. Europe has a model with less incentive based compensation. Europe also has (on average) about 2x the US unemployment rate and about 50% of the salaries in many growth sectors for those who DO have a job. In return, Europe DOES manage to have a lower salary gap between the warehouse worker and the software developer, but not necessarily a higher salary (even by PPP) than the US for the warehouse worker.