Tipping makes a minimum-wage job into one where you can actually live, sort of. Those other states where they assume that you're rolling in so many damn tips that they can pay you beneath federal minimum should probably get hit with federal lawsuits. The problem there isn't tipping, it's shitty statehouses.
Back of the House in every restaurant I ever worked at got tipped out by the servers. If that doesn't happen everywhere, it'd be easy to make it state-mandated.

Sure, other countries actually just go ahead and pay service workers as if they were skilled labor, which they are. The reason we don't do it here *was* racism, and now it's just custom. As long as we're talking economic inequality, there's plenty of areas where shitty employers from Goodwill to OSPIRG find legal loopholes to pay their people less than minimum.
This is one of the few places where the working class gets a bump. Why take it away?

And let's not forget that as it currently stands, if you're a server in Oregon, your tips are assessed at 8% taxable income, whether you made that or not. Probably you made more like 20% and up, but every time you come across some staunch Libertarian who refuses to kick in something to someone for "doing their job," that server is now Paying to serve them.
So just fucking tip; it's not going to break you. Most of the arguments talking about how unfair they are are coming from pieces of shit who don't think they should have to pay anything to anyone ever, so fuck that.