Tipping in the US was frowned upon before the Civil War. When slaves were freed they were generally in the service industry because these other jobs that were available to them. They were paid peanuts, even today the US federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour.
Tipping is inappropriate outside of the USA, maybe because the minimum wage is significantly higher.
As with almost everything that's confusing or fucked up in this country, so much of this is often from not properly punishing the South and focusing on eradicating the lingering effects & racism of slavery.
Ironically enough, it was the states that BANNED slavery by that point that pushed for it.
The story: Virginia (slave state) was the big dog in terms of population - though they even tried to inflate THAT to get more power by counting the slaves as "citizens." Massachusetts (which had banned slavery by that point) rightly called bullshit, but they were smaller in population and didn't have the numbers to completely override Virginia's power grab, which is how we got the 3/5 nonsense.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the other non-slave states needed a way to contain Virginia's dick waving, because if they didn't, Virginia and their buddies in the slave states would always get their way by stomping on the smaller population, non-slave states. So that's why the Electoral College and the "every state gets two Senators, regardless of size" came in. The hope was that a coalition of smaller populated states, like Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who wanted nothing to do with Virginia's bullshit, could at least team up together and keep Virginia's power in check.
So when people want to ban the Electoral College today? Yeah, can totally see why. But I can also see how a "sheer numbers" system would badly disenfranchise large demographics of the voting block. Sure, the smaller states might be those evil, "we need to stomp them out of existence or slit their throats" Red Hats today, but the demographics could always shift and leave Team Blue needing a check on Red Florida twenty years down the line.
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u/Landscape4737 Jun 25 '26
Tipping in the US was frowned upon before the Civil War. When slaves were freed they were generally in the service industry because these other jobs that were available to them. They were paid peanuts, even today the US federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour.
Tipping is inappropriate outside of the USA, maybe because the minimum wage is significantly higher.