The ultimate problem with tipping restaurant service workers is that servers are legally allowed to be paid sub-minimum wage. The restaurant offloads their obligation to pay their employees onto the customer, and if the customer doesn't tip then the server will not be paid anything for the work. Under these conditions, customers have a moral obligation to tip servers, but that doesn't mean the system isn't a mess. Servers get no benefits, back staff get no tips, but servers get cash and the opportunity to underreport their tax burden.
That is not true at all. Read the law. In a situation where a server's tips do not boost their hourly wage to the federal minimum wage, the employer is obligated to compensate them up to that level. So in a situation where, say, a server was never tipped, the employer would have to pay them $7.25 an hour just like any other food service worker who makes minimum wage.
As if managers never break the law. Plenty of managers pool the tips and take their cut from the pool. Illegal? Sure. What can anyone do about it? Only quit.
Quit and report the manager to the labor board. There are whole government departments, federally and in each state, dedicated to prosecuting people who do things like this. If people stop letting them get away with it, they'll stop doing it.
