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"2- it's mathematically easier to figure out a 20% tip."
20% - Figure out 10%, double it
15% - Figure out 10%, add half
I fail to see how it's much easier
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isn't the comparison actually
20% - Figure out 10%, double it
15% - Figure out 10%,
then figure out half of that, then add half to the 10% (and try not to forget both of those different numbers while you're adding them in your head) (while trying not to look like you're thinking too hard about what the tip should be)
Figuring 10% is easy for anyone, just move the decimal. 5% is hard. Not for you, maybe, but for the general population. $73.70 is $7.37 for 10%...quick, what's half of that? doubling is easier.
And I think there's a theme of looking for the easy solution here:
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FWIW I always tip twice the tax dollar amount in restaurants, and in California that'd be ~16%
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Sales tax here is 15% so its pretty easy to just copy the taxes.
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And people used to carry those "tipping calculator cards" in their wallets.
hell, maybe they still do:
http://www.tipping.org/tipcards.html
...this tip card has a bit of, what, social engineering built into it, with columns for 15% and 20%. As if to say, here's the *minimum* you should give, and here's an alternate amount--if, say, the service was better than just the *minimum*...
none of that really answers the question of why-have-tips-gone-up, though. I think it's due to
1) mathematical simplicity. maybe that's find 10% and double it. maybe it's take 8% tax and double it. either way, it ends up somewhere in the above-15% range. and if you're aiming for a 15-20% tip, no one knows how to get to 17 or 18%...so it's easier to figure 20% and shave a bit off, than to figure 15% and add a bit on.
2) social engineering. there's a lot of rhetoric about 15% as the, you know, absolute minimum acceptable amount. really, the implication is that, if you "only" leave 15%, then either you're a cheapskate or the service must have been noticeablly awful in some way. (seems like these definitions used to be applicable to people leaving 10% or less) so there's been an inflation of the definitions of cheap/acceptable/good tipping.
2a. This may be a nit, but I'd always understood the traditional amount-to-tip-on as the meal itself, not the drinks & tax. But these days it seems like the amount at hand is the total bill (again, perhaps because it's easier to work with the final total than to try to figure it out w/o drinks/tax...also perhaps b/c that inflates the amount, as noted above in the autgrat of 18% becoming 19.5% when done after tax). that's possibly going to account for some difference, too.
2b. one last thought - perhaps younger generations are learning tipping habits/culture differently than older ones. again, no one's carrying tip cards around anymore.