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Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

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Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#221
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was repeatedly told in school that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, only to find out recently that places like UAE had not abolished slavery until 1967.

https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-sl...

> Slavery in the Arab world is a benign institution. Slaves are rarely used for industrial or agricultural labor. They are often treated as members of the family. Bright young slaves are educated and given positions of trust and are eventually freed. Mohammed Surur, the former Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, was born a slave. Two managers of one of Jidda's principal hotels were once slaves.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#222
post #25

I was talking to a doctor who went to medical school in Brazil and said it was normal for upper-middle class people to have a live-in domestic servant. Many of the floorplans for condos or houses include a servants quarters. They were telling me theirs cost around $12 USD a day which is not a bad deal.

I am a brazilian doctor. Yeah, richer people are very likely to hire staff to manage their homes. It's not a rule, but it's not rare for them to live in the house they work at. This is common enough to show up as a trope in popular telenovelas. I've yet to uncover a case of literal slavery like TFA though. One could argue the workers aren't getting paid enough and I'd agree, but the workers are getting paid.

It is very common for the worker to not get paid. A place to sleep and food is not payment, enslaved people also got it.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a brazilian doctor. Yeah, richer people are very likely to hire staff to manage their homes. It's not a rule, but it's not rare for them to live in the house they work at. This is common enough to show up as a trope in popular telenovelas. I've yet to uncover a case of literal slavery like TFA though. One could argue the workers aren't getting paid enough and I'd agree, but the workers are getting paid.

It is very common for the worker to not get paid. A place to sleep and food is not payment, enslaved people also got it.

"Very common" ? No. You make it sound like you can find literally enslaved people in random brazilian households.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#224
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correlation is not causation. Would you say USA is a developed country, considering for example Los Angeles slums? And there's a bigger inequality between Elon musk and a well paid software developer than between a poor person in a developing country and a rich politician from that country.

> Would you say USA is a developed country I'm not saying anything (directly). We have definitions for these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country According to any way we currently categorize developed countries, the US is one of them.

Acording to what you say:

- "The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere."

- "they go together" (poverty and inequality).

- The US is a developed country.

- The US has a great wealth inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...

What you say implies contradictions.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#225
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are writing about democratic countries. Everyone votes. I sense that you're pointing to a different problem.

Even in democracies, voting can be distorted. Gerrymandering, lobbying, revolving doors, plain old bribes, etc.

So, corruption is the problem, not inequality.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#226
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serfdom wasn't legally abolished in Russia until 1861. Slavery was technically abolished in the late 1700s, but in some areas serfs were still bought and sold like chattel until the end of serfdom. The Ottoman Empire legally abolished slavery in the 1880s, but there was still illicit yet tolerated slavery in Turkey into the 1930s. I think in some areas of the Sahel chattel slavery may still exist as a practical matte…

Serfdom continued in practice in Russia for decades and often serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them. The fact that serfdom de-facto remained is one of the primary reasons Russia's industrialization lagged the rest of Europe for so long as factories didn't get the initial cheap lab…

> serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them.

Exactly. Bolsheviks just changed the name from "serfdom" to "collective farms". Mandatory membership where members were not allowed an ID that enabled them to move inside the country and therefore were bound to the farm. The practice continued until the late 1970s.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#227
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. This happens in Europe as well. It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.

On a side note: be VERY suspicious if you ever come across a situation, where person identified by a passport, does not keep (more exactly: control) it themselves. This is a big red flag you've encountered some sort of exploitative (and possibly illegal) situation. Please remember! Quoting from my own passport: "The bearer of this passport may pass it to a third party only if there is a statutory obligation to do so"…

When visiting Egypt, the hotel took control of all the guests passport and only returned them at departure date. It is not the same as work relation, obviously, but I wonder how common that practice is in other tourist destinations.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe.. but it's very close to "sadistic family". It's very very close. It wasn't slavery, but excruciating close to slavery. And definitely the punishment given is a complete under-reaction and your attempt here to lighten the situation lightens it way too much.

If it was as bad as you are claiming it to be, she wouldn't stay with the family before the investigation, yet everyone deemed better to let her stay with the family even after the sentence was given.

It's the same reason why a lot of wives who have spent years being abused and beaten by husbands end up still staying with their husband.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#229
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note: be VERY suspicious if you ever come across a situation, where person identified by a passport, does not keep (more exactly: control) it themselves. This is a big red flag you've encountered some sort of exploitative (and possibly illegal) situation. Please remember! Quoting from my own passport: "The bearer of this passport may pass it to a third party only if there is a statutory obligation to do so"…

When visiting Egypt, the hotel took control of all the guests passport and only returned them at departure date. It is not the same as work relation, obviously, but I wonder how common that practice is in other tourist destinations.

It's incredibly unusual – I've not encountered that in any destination I've travelled to (including Egypt).

They'll usually make a photocopy of the passport during check-in, then immediately return it.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt taxation evetually more than half of your earnings? Eventually close to 70 or 80 percent. Depending on what plantation you live

Claiming (twice) that taxation takes most of your earnings is not the same as proving it. We didn't believe you the first time, and we don't believe you the second. Got any actual evidence?

I dunno about proving, but 20% income tax + 20% vat + property taxes + estate tax + the various extra taxed thing like gas etc, and you're easily over half.
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