I agree with you in principle, but I suppose I'm more acquiescent than resentful. I certainly don't agree with arguments that say that waitstaff deserve tips, because they work hard. Everyone in the service industry who is good at their job works hard, and most of them don't get tips (I worked as a line cook as a teenager, and I'll be damned if I didn't sweat my ass off). It is more correct to say that waitstaff deserve tips, because they get paid slave wages otherwise, so that restaurateurs can keep (nominal) prices artificially low. I 'support' the tipping culture in the sense that I engage in it, but I don't support in in principle.
Waitstaff deserve tips because they need to make a living and we've got a bass-ackward structure in place to make that happen. It's a real "fog of war" situation right now, though - I've heard from more than a couple servers that if you really want to register your displeasure at your service, tip a dollar because lots of people don't tip on principle. Then there's the fact that there's no real agreement as to who gets tipped what and any etiquette guideline is more likely to tell you what to tip the paperboy than the data recovery specialist. Into this we've got the typical opportunities afforded by the large and organized over the small and disparate - restaurants skimming off tips, the IRS confusing the issue, etc. So what I see is a situation where everyone is pissed off - except the restaurants. I'm into pissing restaurants off.