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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#581

Post by gambiting »

jedrek wrote: post #534
gambiting wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should stick your nose outside a bit more often? In Poland if you make ~$20k/year you are super rich, can easily afford to not just buy but build a new house. There's absolutely nothing miserable about it. Saying that "nowhere in the world" $55k provides a good life is just hilariously wrong. Even in UK, I make ~$35k before tax and I'm living a very comfortable life.

That is bullshit. At $20k a in Warsaw (75k PLN/year, 6250/month), your take home is about 5000. The absolutely cheapest houses, run down shitholes from the communist era with few windows and lots of stairs, cost at least 600k in the city limits. That's your entire salary for 10 years just to cover the capital. With a 30 year mortgage you'd be paying half your salary. It's been a long time since I've made less than $2…

You picked the most expensive city in Poland, that's like comparing median salary in UK to living in London - you would be borderline poor.

Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk - 6250/month lets you live extremely comfortably.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#582

Post by propman »

endymi0n wrote: post #408

What an incredibly deep and well written story. I did not know or appreciate that the author Alex Tizon died a few hours before publication - and this piece was his Faustus, the one personal story he struggled for years to write. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/a-repor... I rarely use the word masterpiece, but it feels appropriate here.

I wholeheartedly agree, I was deeply moved by this and loved his writing style so much and wanted to read something else by him. Shocking that he died so soon, seemed like such a good man.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#583

Post by Consultant32452 »

oarsinsync wrote: post #484
Consultant32452 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great, so they can just pay the rent with emotional reward then. Keeping with gender roles... should we pay men to mow their own lawn? Of course not, people cut the lawn themselves to save money when compared to hiring a lawn service. Every dollar a family doesn't spend on lawn service or daycare is a dollar that can be spent on food or shelter. We do put an economic value on the domestic work that women do and ever…

> If salaries of teachers are too low it's only because there are too many qualified people in the market willing to perform that labor. Alas, in the environments I've been in, that's definitely not the case. A shortage of qualified teachers doesn't trigger pay rises, it triggers a change in the qualifications required to be considered a teacher. 15 years ago, my Biology teacher was a fresh-out-of-university BioChem…

>The markets are not always right.

"Right" is kind of a loaded word. The markets may not reflect your personal values towards education, and also don't really reflect mine either in this case. But I suspect that the market still reflects the aggregate value society places on education. There's a small caveat here for government legislated requirements and salaries will lag because government is slow to react. For what it's worth though, my understanding is that private school teachers, whose salary and benefits are not legislated, tend to be paid less than public school teachers. They are probably a more accurate reflection of the market value of teachers.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#584

Post by jchonphoenix »

xenadu02 wrote: post #163
shas3 wrote: post #51

Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…

Very true; a former coworker grew up with a "housekeeper" in HK. She told us stories about how her dad slipped the housekeeper extra pay and Christmas bonuses because her mother refused to allow it. She said her mom would have been irate if she had found out. To her mother such people were disposable servants not worth consideration. I really can't understand such a mentality.

I would add the counterpoint, however, that HK housekeepers can live lives much better than some HK citizens.

Room and board is given to a housekeeper. That in and of itself can translate to thousands a month in rent and many times, are better living conditions than HK citizens can afford.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#585

Post by [deleted] »

xenadu02 wrote: post #163
shas3 wrote: post #51

Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…

Very true; a former coworker grew up with a "housekeeper" in HK. She told us stories about how her dad slipped the housekeeper extra pay and Christmas bonuses because her mother refused to allow it. She said her mom would have been irate if she had found out. To her mother such people were disposable servants not worth consideration. I really can't understand such a mentality.

[deleted]

Re: My Family’s Slave

#586

Post by JeffL »

tathougies wrote: post #391
achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

> All of the work in a traditional mother's role, well it's usually uncompensated too. Sure it's a "labor of love" but it's also just a huge amount of work, for decades. An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. Just ask your mom. I mean the key difference here is the obvious one, which is that spouses have complete access to the other's money. period. If Lola had…

> My wife and I live in California, a community property state. At the moment we married, everything that is mine became hers and vice versa.

This is not correct according to my understanding. Community property is anything that is acquired after marriage (not including inheritance), any house that you both live in, or any accounts that become commingled during the marriage. If you have an investment account before marriage that you don't use to pay for stuff and don't add to with salary, then it remains individual property, even in California. I think being a community property state just means that community property is mandated to be split 50/50, not that all property becomes instantly community.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#587

Post by kwaldman »

lordnacho wrote: post #20

I had a terrible "Billy" moment a few years ago. I was travelling and a friend said I could use her house, because it was empty. This was perfect for me, since I had a wife and kid. It turns out there was a housekeeper. She did everything for us, made us feel very comfortable, cooked, served, helped with the kid, etc. Then one day I found out she didn't have her own room, despite the place being a multi storey mansio…

full writeup here https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-s.... no idea if this is related or not but "slavename" is the same

Re: My Family’s Slave

#588

Post by int_19h »

lettergram wrote: post #405
int_19h wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left is not a hivemind. There are people who self-identify as liberals but not progressives, and there are people who self-identify as progressives but not liberals, and there's those who mix and match.

Ive actually noticed that really there appears to be a pretty interesting split between progressives and conservatives. Leaving the middle "liberals" (really from both sides) caught in an awkward situation. For example, being liberal usually implies greater freedoms, such as being pro-choice. However, it can also be pro-gun ownership, or anti-war, pro-research, etc. To me that's the dichotomy the U.S. is facing is re…

I self-identify as liberal and not progressive, for the most part, but I still consider myself to be on the left, not on the middle.

For the most part, my politics are similar to progressives - higher taxes, public healthcare, more expansive welfare (I support UBI), and social justice in general.

The reason why I don't consider myself a progressive is that I feel that the progressive ideology in US has largely abandoned the traditional concept of natural individual rights in pursuit of all these goals. You have people openly claiming that freedom of speech is not worth it if it gets in the way of criminalizing offensive speech, for example. Or how due process is an outdated notion that makes it hard to prosecute sexual harassment properly. Basically, the further left you go with progressives, the more individual rights are sacrificed to collective ones.

That, to me, is the line past which you can no longer meaningfully call yourself a liberal, since liberalism is all about individual rights, ultimately. Where left-wing and right-wing liberals differ is on the matter on how to best maximize those rights, and to what extent government regulation is advantageous or detrimental to that, especially on economic matters.

And, to some extent, on what those rights are, precisely - for example, I don't consider property rights to be fundamental natural rights (but then again, neither did Thomas Jefferson, and he sure wasn't left-wing!). Note, it doesn't mean that property is a bad idea - I think it's a social construct that is broadly useful, it's just not an absolute right (and hence taxation and wealth redistribution is not inherently an infringement on such).

Re: My Family’s Slave

#589

Post by bagels »

snowwrestler wrote: post #378
bagels wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Childcare is avoidable if you avoid making children.

Cool, then who's going to pay the bills when you're retired?

I understand your implication.

There are a lot of grown up adult children that are being supported by their elderly parents.

It doesn't always work out as you are implying.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#590

Post by vatotemking »

clay_to_n wrote: post #388
Banthum wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of those situations where it only feels horrifying because you're seeing it. Assuming these helpers aren't being tricked into taking the work, they are choosing it. Which means that whatever alternatives they face in their homeland (and out of sight of the wealthy intelligentsia) are even worse. What would be terrible is if this opportunity was cut off to assuage the consciences of the wealthy, whether by pr…

> Assuming these helpers aren't being tricked into taking the work, they are choosing it. Which means that whatever alternatives they face in their homeland (and out of sight of the wealthy intelligentsia) are even worse. I don't think this is correct. In Tizon's case, and in many cases, the "choice" of the helper is taken away. In this example, by moving to the US (with lies that she would be able to visit her famil…

For Filipino domestic workers, its a deliberate choice driven by lack of work opportunities at home.
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