Should Tipping at Restaurants be Eliminated?

There's a movement afoot by a number of restaurants around the country to abolish tipping.

The most recent participant is a high end Japanese eatery in New York, Sushi Yasuda, which raised its menu prices by 15% to cover waitstaff salaries.

“The meal should be there for you to enjoy without doing this calculus,” says Sushi Yasuda owner Scott Rosenberg.

That makes sense, but I like having the control over how much to tip and I'm one who nearly always tips at least 20% (unless the server is really rude, which is rare) because I feel for people who depend so heavily on tips to survive.

But there's talk that some restaurants are finding that including the gratuity in the service charge is a better way to handle tipping despite its long history in our culture.

According to pjmedia.com, Jay Porter, who formerly owned a restaurant in San Diego, had this to say about ditching tipping:

"When we switched from tipping to a service charge, our food improved, probably because our cooks were being paid more and didn’t feel taken for granted. In turn, business improved, and within a couple of months, our server team was making more money than it had under the tipped system. The quality of our service also improved."

What do you think? Should tipping be eliminated or not?