Although "The Economic Policy Institute" is where most discerning people turn for objective reporting, the LA Times, a lesser known fringe publication, is also covering this story:

When it comes to restaurant tipping, the Trump administration thinks socialism is best.

"The Labor Department has notified the Office of Management and Budget that it intends to rescind an Obama-era rule preventing restaurant owners from pooling servers’ tips with kitchen staff.

"The rule specified that tips belong solely to the server. The Trump administration wants restaurant owners once again to be able to redistribute the wealth among non-tipped workers."

http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-trump-restaurant-tips-20171107-story.html

Taking the tips from the folks paid $2 (because its assumed they will receive tips to make up the difference in wages) to give a portion to the folks making $11 seems more like capitalism to me.

Have you ever worked in a restaurant?

My experience was that tips were pooled so that busboys, etc., who were very much part of the service equation, would also receive a portion of the gratuity.
Where I worked, it would have been thought of as very unfair to cut them out of the action.

Most the places I work have worked at combine bustboys and waiters in to the same job when that was an issue so tips only went to people who's pay was based on the asumption they would make them. I can see restaurant setups were this could go both ways however. largely I can only think about how much I hate tipping culture and how I would rather see a phasing out of the eximptions to minimum wage waiters have.

I thought the issue about this is that this made it not illegal for owners to pocket tips.

Where I worked the busboys made minimum wage and the servers didn't.

And an end to tipping culture would be delightful.

Fair enough, and there are lots of restaurants where the waiters receive hundreds of dollars in tips every shift and the busboys make minimum wage.

A one-size-fits-all solution, as is often the case, be a poor way to approach this issue.

You might be overselling the number of restaurants where servers are making hundreds per shift, let alone those where that happens regularly.

Why not just end tipping as a thing, or at least a rationale for paying folks less than minimum wage? Splitting tips is less painful that way for everyone.