> In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.

This actually varies state by state. In Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington the minimum wage does not change tipped vs non-tipped. Also in other states if the pay after tips do not meet the state minimum wage the employer is required to make up this difference.

If you actually look at the data tipped employees make significantly more vs median income in countries with tipping than without.

> If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.

I think this works if we're talking about a full restaurant, If we're talking about a mostly empty restaurant then even a 5% tip is money that the server would have not otherwise had, pretty certain they'd choose more money over less.