There are laws in place for service workers related to minimum wage. The employers have to make up the difference if tips don’t meet the rate for hours worked. It seems to me that’s not sufficient for the times.
Hypothetically, if everyone were to stop tipping in the U.S. would things be better or worse for workers? Would employers start paying workers more?
Worse, monumentally worse. Expecting employers to make up the difference without legal force is so idiotic that it’s just a publicly accepted given that choosing not to tip is choosing to let the worker in question go hungry.
Workers are so hostile about backlash to aggressive tipping culture because they see it as the side of the equation that can be expected to have any empathy at all without the threat of legal consequences trying to wiggle out from being seen as that.