>Tipping is about compensating workers for the value of their labor when their base compensation doesn’t appropriately do that
Is it really? Genuine question! I'm from the UK, and here a tip is generally seen as something which is given for exceptional service, rather than subsidising an employer's lack of remuneration for the job at hand.
In the UK that's correct because those kinds of positions pay a reasonable wage. In the US, restaurant workers can easily be making less than minimum wage without tips. (The legality is weird and varies by state, but my understanding is that "traditionally tipped" jobs like waitstaff are exempt from minimum wage regulations on the assumption the tips will make up the gap. The restaurant owner is required to make up the gap if tips don't, so in theory you could just not tip and implicitly force the restaurant owner to raise wages that way, but in practice restaurants are the kind of low-legal-enforcement business in the US where owners already frequently try to under-pay staff so this strategy would probably mostly just hurt workers.)
So my personal approach to tipping in the US is that it starts at a base level as appropriate compensation, and goes up from there for quality of service (or very rarely goes down if service is atrocious).
Is it really? Genuine question! I'm from the UK, and here a tip is generally seen as something which is given for exceptional service, rather than subsidising an employer's lack of remuneration for the job at hand.