Tipping is okay if disconnected from employment for labor. Gifting another person is a nice gesture. Making it part of your compensation for work is a ripoff by the employer.

Employers should pay a wage to workers. If workers want to work for free and depend on the kindness of strangers for their subsistence, they need to sign an agreement stating such and suffer the consequences. Of course, this logic goes in one ear and out the other because tipping is so carved into the U.S. culture. Not all cultures tip and when they go abroad they take their no-tipping attitude with them; they don't even know what it is.