Hawaii does not add fluoride to their water. Utah may be the first to out-right ban it, but there are quite a few local communities and cities that opt-out of adding it to their drinking water.
The US is, according to Wikipedia, among a small minority of countries in which a majority of people drink fluoridated water. Various European countries have discontinued doing so. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation>
Yep. My favorite thing is when I am not even at a restaurant and I'm being asked to tip a retail worker making well above minimum wage. As a former bartender who made $2.65US an hour and relied on tips for my "paycheck" each week, seeing this new "tipping everyone" trend is like a slap in the face.
Bottom line, if your business can't afford to pay its people a living wage, then it can't afford to operate.
Two of the most hilarious things I've seen are tips at self-serve kiosks, and tips where you carry the food to the person behind the counter. Tipping them for ringing up an item..
At a corner store I frequent, they recently changed POS systems, and the new ones show a tipping screen. The person there always quickly dismisses it; I think they haven't figured out how to disable it, and are a little embarrassed that the machine is asking you to tip for just ringing up your items.
(Well, they also make espresso drinks and made-to-order deli sandwiches, so I guess it's appropriate to tip if you order those.)
Sorry for the late reply, but I'm wondering if you can explain why you tip for delivery?
In my area, pizza delivery drivers (read: not DoorDashers, etc. I am not sure what they make since I refuse to use those services) make about $12 - $15/hour and get paid for mileage (usually between $0.50 - $0.62 per mile.) I'm not seeing a reason to tip them. They are making well above minimum wage in my State, unlike the restaurant servers/bartenders that only just barely crested $4/hour as of 2025. The latter is in a position to rely on tips, the former is far from it.
I ask because we don't seem to have an established "hard line" on when tipping is appropriate in the United States, and when it is not. This extremely fuzzy understanding is allowing companies like DoorDash, coffee shops, etc to under pay their staff by off-loading part of the cost to the customer, which makes your $7 latte cost $10, or whatever. It's steamy bullshit and needs to be shoveled into the bin.
If we had a hard line on when tipping is justified, we'd quickly see a change in the other direction. I've always felt that the hard line should be "if you are making less than minimum wage, then tipping is justified." That's it. No soft maybes, no washy-washy justifications.
That being the case, if a barista (avg $15/hour in the US) is not happy _without_ the tips, then they have two options: demand more from their employer, or find a different job that pays better. Either way, the employer is left to consider either raising wages to keep people satisfied, or doing the same just to keep people in the door and stay in business. The barista is, in essence, the face of the company. They do the work the customer sees, which makes them important to the sustainability of the company. Ergo, the company needs to put more resources in the barista's pocket to ensure quality work.
It sort of blows my mind why everyone else in the US does not think this way, but I have tried to dissect my own stance on tipping (from the standpoint of having spent nearly a decade working front-of-the-house in restaurants), and I'm really having trouble poking holes in my own logic. So, I'm always interested to hear other people's takes on why they tip the way they do.
Imagine it’s raining, or they come really fast. Even if not so, it is always expected to tip the person doing delivery. That’s just the custom, like tipping in restaurant or tipping the bartender is the custom.
This is the problem. You basically said "we do it like this because that's the way we've always done it," which is the weakest form of justification for anything.
Rain, snow, etc...do you tip the person who delivers your mail? They do it in an LLV (a rather treacherous vehicle with little to no climate control) or on foot, but nobody tips them. When the pizza delivery person applied for the job, they did so knowing they would have to deliver in bad weather, but somehow we reach the conclusion that the responsibility of making sure that driver is being paid adequately for their risk and efforts is shifted to the customer, rather than than their employer.
Now, I should clarify that despite my years of restaurant service where my $2.65/hour paycheck existed nominally for the sole purpose of covering taxes (hence, my "take home" pay coming directly from the customers to my pocket), that I am in the camp of abolishing tipping altogether. Raise the wages of all service workers to a livable wage, which all these companies can certainly afford, and we'd be done with it. But I know that's a huge leap, so we need to take baby steps to get there.
Having a well-defined notion of which positions should be tip-based and which should not is the first baby step.
Great film, but bad scene, honestly. The arguments it makes are intended to make Mr Pink look like the pseudo-intellectual a-hole of the group, rather than be the social commentary on capitalism, labor relations and whose responsibility employee compensation actually is or should be, which is at the crux of any good discussion about the appropriateness of tipping.
I guess what I am getting at with my other comments is that we do not have a clear understanding of said appropriateness, and thus, we, the consumer, along side the food service worker, are generally taken advantage of by the companies that perpetuate the idea while said companies are off the hook for labor costs.
Now, before someone (if anyone is still following this thread) chimes in with "but if the restaurants pay the bartenders/servers a full wage, the food and drinks would be way more expensive!" I am here to tell you "travel more." I have been to many other countries where tipping is not at all a thing, and the food costs about the same as it does in the US.
When you walk into a restaurant in the US, you're getting ripped off. The dish you just paid $16US for cost them about $3 to make, including wage. It's not like the cooks are prepping one dish at a time, or the servers are only taking one table at a time...not to mention most restaurants in the US are using frozen, prepared ingredients that they are really just heating up or re-hydrating. Overhead costs like electricity and rent? A drop in the bucket compared to what small businesses have to deal with. The staff is making bare-minimum wages as it is while the parent companies and investors are making bank. That money from your $16US meal goes up, but very little of it actually comes back down.
Tipping exists because greed at the top exists and its unfair to both food service workers and the customers, but we've been at it so long that it's been normalized. And now it's spreading to other industries, like retail and online sales.
Yes, it's pretty common. It's also common for businesses where customers tip to underpay their employees on the expectation that they'll make it up with tips. It's legal to do this in many jurisdictions.
As an American, I wish we didn't do this, but it's a collective action problem that's very hard to solve.
What exactly is the definition of "underpay" here? Back when my wife was a server, it seemed like a cheat code to the service industry - she was making way more money waiting tables for $2.65/hr + tips than she had made at any other job she'd had (something like $18-20/hr 15 years ago)
In college I worked at a Chili's and made anywhere from $15-20 an hour in a busy ___location, which was decent wages for a college student at the time.
Correct. bruckie has never actually worked as a server; otherwise he would know that tipping in the US is hugely beneficial to waiters, bartenders, etc., even with the legally allowed lower minimum wage. This is why tipping has never gone away through legislative means despite no shortage of waiters and bartenders in the populace, and why the occasional restaurant that proudly announces that it is a "no-tipping" establishment, and gets the requisite amount of slavering coverage in the usual virtue-signaling subreddits, never stays open long.
My dislike of tipping isn't to help the "poor servers" (and other employees partially compensated via tips). You're correct that I've never been a server, but I've had several friends and roommates who have been, and I'm aware of how it works. The good ones make (relatively) a lot of money; the bad ones sometimes don't, and usually find a different job pretty quickly. (I totally see how mentioning the lower minimum wage muddled my point, though.)
The reason I wish we didn't tip is because I think the list price should reflect the true cost of whatever I'm buying. I think that is more honest, encourages healthy competition, and is a pleasant consumer experience.
I was really glad when the DOT forced airlines to include taxes and fees in ticket prices in 2012, and wish there were a similar law/regulation that applied to all commerce. (And yes, I realize this is hard, given the incredible complexity of U.S. tax laws in a bazillion different—and often overlapping—jurisdictions.)
One thing that annoys me is that some states, like California, don't have a tipped minimum wage. (Well, we do, it's just set to the same number as the non-tipped minimum.) And yet we're still expected to tip. I guess the real problem is that it's expensive to live in CA, and our minimum wage needs to be hiked up quite a bit.
One of the many reasons I left the USA. Too bad US-Americans are so used to tipping 20% they even do it when traveling... giving the rest of us a reputation as being suckers.
Yes, one of the MANY cultural reasons. One less thing I have to think about when paying for food. There's honestly too many reasons to list: cost, safety, food, transportation, work life balance, education, being near family, and to see more of the world.
"Guilt" is an exaggeration, but the human behind the machine might care. It's a tiny inconvenience all things considered, and more of a principal than a practical issue. It helps tip the scale of where I'd rather live.
Yes, for nearly any restaurant this is the unspoken recommendation, and sometimes enforced automatically if your group is larger than 6-8. Source: I am an American.
Yes, at least in NYC. And you get to tip in coffee places too, even when your coffee is to go. The card payment device (whatever they are called) gives you options such as 20%, 40%, 60% when you try to pay.
for some people it is. Maybe you'll become a believer when you realize that waiters wages are only around $2.35 an hour plus tips. Some states require that wait staff make -at least- federal minimum wage ($7.50? or so). Most do quite a bit better than that in all but the worst restaurant jobs. Not really a living wage tho. Some people do well on tips in upper crust restaurants, and often bartenders have enough turnover to do pretty well too.
Yeah, this is one of those places where because RFK Jr took the anti- stand there's an understandable assumption that it's more nutty anti-science stuff, but it's much less clear cut when it comes to fluoridation. Europe has much lower rates than the US, which is an outlier on these stats only approached by Australia, and before Utah the major high profile anti-fluoride stance was made by Portland:
I'd be happier if that broken-but-correct-2x-a-day guy banned HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) instead. It is my personal hypothesis that it is the cause of 'sugar cancer' (general cases of bad sugars / imbalances of sugars in the body), including Diabetes.
Sucrose is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. HFCS has from 42-55% fructose (there are grades), the rest being glucose (well some 25% of HFCS is water, but simplifying to the nutritive parts)
In the body it's literally all the same with minor variations in ratios. Indeed, the revered Mexican coke with cane sugar...the sucrose is broken down to component glucose and fructose in the acidic environment [1], exactly as happens with HFCS variants, and it would have been the moment it hit your digestive tract anyways.
There is zero scientific justification for the weird focus on HFCS. Yes, glucose and grossly excessive amounts of fructose are a serious problem. Especially in forms that rapidly get absorbed and go off like a glucose bomb -- our bodies are not adapted to the extremely rapid intake of glucose forms of food we eat now, including ultra-processed foods fill with refined carbs.
The #1 source of glucose in most diets is white breads, rices and so on. White flour is 60-80% starch, while white rice pushes 90% starch. Starch is strings of glucose molecules, and indeed enzymes turn that starch to free glucose almost immediately when eaten. So from a glucose perspective flour is much worse than an equal amount of sugar.
And of course nutritive sweeteners in all their forms should be avoided. But table sugar isn't more wholesome or better than HFCS.
Interesting hypothesis, is it based on anything specific? I think refined/added sugars in general are probably something best avoided, but admittedly still eat plenty. The idea that one sugar is materially worse than another feels off, but I can't quite put my finger on why.
The GI of sugar (sucrose) and HFCS is largely the same. Indeed, the HFCS-55 used in colas actually has less glucose and more fructose, and fructose actually doesn't lead to a blood sugar spike (or, more correctly, a much lower impact), leading to HFCS-55 having a lower glycemic index. HFCS and sugar are both just combinations of glucose and fructose molecules.
HFCS is not worse than sugar unless you're consuming such an outrageous amount that the fructose leads to a fatty liver (which does happen). But if you're consuming that much HFCS, it's only a small amount more of sucrose to yield the same outcome, as of course both have loads of fructose.
The one viable argument to vilify HFCS is simply that it's so convenient and inexpensive (courtesy of massively subsidized corn production) that it led to many more products having added sugars. But people who carefully pour over ingredients looking for HFCS, but treat sugar as wholesome, are usually operating on ignorance.
Not a chance that will happen, given the corn production of America. We have the most productive land in the world for growing maize, and Lord knows we’ll find shit to do with it.
We grow lots of corn because it is very heavily subsidized and insured by the US government. At scale you are guaranteed to make a profit, even during bad weather years.
Have you ever tried to purchase things in a US supermarket that lack HFCS? Chances are good you're looking at raw meats and vegetables and the like for a high effort meal made out of relatively high cost components.
I don't buy anything with HFCS at US supermarkets. I get all sorts of prepared foods: bread, yogurt, crackers, sweets, cereals (and a lot of more basic things to make meals with).
Using certain family members as a personal rubric, fluoridated water has been a right-left issue for at least 2.5 decades. I think it’s been pretty polarized for longer, though it may have taken a long time to gain steam in mainstream “discourse”.
I'm not sure you can use personal anecdotes to come to any conclusions about broad trends. To look at some actual data, I took the 2008 and 2024 election results and compared them with fluoridation rates. The split is pretty even:
The top 10 most fluoridated states went 5/5 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Kentucky, Minnesota, Illinois, North Dakota, Virginia, Georgia, South Dakota, Maryland, Ohio, and South Carolina. Hardly a blue wall.
The bottom 10 least fluoridated states with 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2008 and 6/4 Rep/Dem in 2024. These were Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Louisiana, Alaska, Utah, New Hampshire, and Mississippi. Hardly a red wall.
The bottom three least fluoridated states are all hardcore blue: Hawaii, New Jersey, and Oregon.
I just don't see any evidence here that this has been a left-right polarized issue until this year. The distribution of fluoride by political leanings is just too random.
I was surprised to learn this. "Worldwide, the Irish Republic, Singapore and New Zealand are the only countries which implement mandatory water fluoridation."
I live in New Zealand and my town doesn't put fluoride in the water but it seems like they'll be made to do so fairly soon. I don't really care one way or the other from the point of view of ingesting the stuff, but I do consider it a bit of a waste of money. People who brush with toothpaste don't need this and people who don't are probably drinking too much soda. A more useful thing to do might be to subsidize toothpaste for people who can't / won't buy it for their kids.
> People who brush with toothpaste don't need this and people who don't are probably drinking too much soda
I think every person in my social circles with any kind of illness or disability would be incredibly grateful for fluoridation, and it's not because of drinking too much soda
Yeah fair call. There's always some edge cases which is why I'm not the one making public policy. Although I don't think they sell the policy very well. There would be other ways to spend money for better dental health, NZ really doesn't subsidize dental care much compared to European countries.
Many other places fluoridate salt. There’s many ways to get flourish (toothpaste being the best if you can get people to use it correctly) but the evidence that mass fluoridation of some kind is good for dental health is enormous.
It seems like they could compare states/countries/cities while controlling for other factors (age, income level, etc) to see how well fluoridation works. I'm pretty sure you'll find that fluoridation helps lower the number of cavities, but it's not going to be a slam dunk.
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e8572d-c5f4-8000-9393-c2e894c922...