I don’t want to get all “Mr. Pink” here but I have never agreed with the idea that a restaurant should underpay their wait staff and then expect for you to pay the wait staff for them and have your meal cost 15% more than they said it would. I quit going to a restaurant (that is now out of business) because they switched to table service instead of ordering at the counter. Basically they had just raised their prices by 15% and made me have to wait and hope for the server to see I needed a drink refill instead of being able to just go get it myself. But anyway..
If they are changing the wage you have to pay someone in order to call them salary instead of hourly, it makes sense that it would mostly affect people who manage fast food restaurants or retail establishment of a similar scope. If we go beyond the question of whether the government should be able to micromanage your business (the idea that they can has been around a lot longer than Obama) then I’m going to have to say that paying someone $27k to manage your restaurant and expecting him to work more than 40 hours and be there all the time does sound like a crappy deal.
I don't mind tipping and tend to overtip. There are dozens of servers across the country that see me enter the door and race to the front to seat me. I travel 150+ days per year and will often camp out in a restaurant rather than wait in an airport or hide in a hotel room. I understand that such actions on my part deserve a bit more of a tip.
All my girls worked in full service restaurants and came to understand the concept of tips = commissions; good service = good tips. Two out of three paid their way through college serving in restaurants.
What has changed is the dynamic of the restaurant business. The government (at all levels) can really micromanage a business to the point where profits are nearly impossible. So the owner hires inexperienced (cheap) managers and pays a waitress wage and cuts every corner they can ... leading to bad restaurants at the low end of the scale and irregular service in the middle class restaurants.
Most countries do not have a tip system in place (except at bars), and few servers like working Sunday after church due to poor tippers. The media has even embarrassed a few politicians to start overtipping.
The restaurant business is not for most people. The owner will build the business he wants, so I have always asked to meet the owners of the places where my kids served. There is no substitute for an honest, generous owner. A bad owner will build a crappy business, as you said.
These honest, generous owners are just very hard to find any more.