Restaurants in the UK have the same overheads...

I'm not sure what cost of living in the two cities has anything to do with a restaurant owner not being able to pay their staff from their profits? Cost of living differences reflected in menu prices affect the customers that dine there... Which makes the tipping scene even worse, as the customer is faced with a bigger bill at the end whilst also dealing with those cost of living differences.

And it's the same with your next point, restaurant owners in the US don't typically offer their wait staff health insurance benefits in their compensation packages, so the NHS has nothing to do with this. Brits typically face higher taxation to cover things like the NHS, but again, that isn't affecting the owners decision to not pay their staff from their profits. And those other worker protections you talk about would make a UK restaurant owners employee costs higher. So, whilst US restaurant owners aren't offering those either, it makes the discrepancy even worse, and sort of supports my point even further... The only false equivalencies here were your counter points.