"The Kindness of Strangers": The Tip and the Minimum Wage in France, Germany, and the United States.

A large number of employees work for tips; but the tip is an ambiguous institution-in economics, ethics, social practice, and law. This article explores those ambiguities in three countries-France, Germany, and the United States. In all three serious efforts were mounted to suppress the tip. In all three those efforts failed. And all three eventually legislated a minimum wage. But the status of the customer's tip as the employer's wage varies in each. This essay explores how that has come about and why it is so.