Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Having a Servant Is Not a Right

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 235 posts

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#101

Post by anishkothari »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #77
wrongc0ntinent wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot figure out the "servant" business in India without considering the caste system. We get the income inequality side pretty well, it makes sense. But until the caste crap gets replaced by a different currency, being/having a servant is a different concept from a westerner's.

India doesn't have much income inequality. Their Gini is 33, same ballpark as France, Bangladesh and the UK. (For comparison, Denmark is at 25 and the US is at 45.)

> India doesn't have much income inequality

This[1] page shows India's Gini coefficient at 36.8 in 2004. India suffers from very high income inequality

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#102

Post by genwin »

x0054 wrote: post #94
genwin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the laws pass that require servants to be paid more, some servants will be lucky enough to make more money as a result, others will starve to death because they will go from making $64/month to nothing at all. Replace "servant" with any low-paying job. That's the old argument for ending the minimum wage. How many people starve to death in countries with a minimum wage? What actually happens is that wealth gets r…

You can not compare low paid workers in US to the once in India. US has some social safety nets. Admittedly, not a lot, but US has food stamps, and assistive housing, and an economy that's working, maybe not well, but well enough. India has none of those. Many people in India lack basic things like drinking water. You can not compare the two. Lets say tomorrow India passes a law that requires, under penalty of jail,…

It's impossible to create a social safety net? When they have dirty drinking water that's largely because they don't have a minimum wage. In computer terms this is called bootstrapping. You convert from a backwards country to a developed country via (in part by) a minimum wage. Many other countries have done it. So can India.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#103

Post by kamakazizuru »

camus2 wrote: post #61
petilon wrote: post #45

According to the story, servants only earn about $64 to $161 per month, which is too little. Author also opines that if someone cannot afford to pay more for domestic help then they shouldn't have domestic help. That's easy to say. That's like saying it is better to starve than work for $64 to $161 per month. If that's the most the employer can afford to pay you, why wouldn't you take it, as opposed to starving? Indi…

Yeah, why paying them at all , after all , they would be starving if they ware not slaves ... And folks like you are ok with slavery and exploitation...

except they arent slaves - and if they could find better paying work - there would be nothing stopping them from going after it. It is a free market at the end of the day.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#104

Post by sliverstorm »

tokipin wrote: post #52
sliverstorm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's white-collar crime. Even Americans are not entirely happy with white-collar criminals getting thrown in with blue-collar criminals. Not because of classism, just because white-collar criminals are non-violent and it doesn't seem right to throw an embezzler in with cutthroats & muggers.

i don't see the problem. crime -> prison. it seems classist to me to not throw them all into the same place

different crimes merit different punishments. Why should length of time be the only variable?

As for classism- a nonviolent field worker should go in the same pen as a nonviolent lawyer.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#105

Post by sandGorgon »

allochthon wrote: post #75
suprgeek wrote: post #59

While this diplomat person as an individual is none too commendable (back home in India she is involved in some questionable property dealings [1]) - there is much more to the story than this shallow but seemingly introspective "article". The lady (servant - according to the article) was brought in on an authorized "Au pair" visa. Indian Diplomats in the US are paid little in-terms of monetary benefits. Most compensa…

American here. Watching this case intermittently, it's a little hard to fathom the seething anger in India. The matter seems fairly straightforward: - Rule of law applies, regardless the person; that's the theory, anyway. In practice, the laws tend to favor the wealthy and powerful; but whatever gets into the books tends to be applied as resources permit. In other words, this had nothing to do with the fact that the…

The maid in question could have refused to work and returned back to India - but the reality which most Americans dont want to accept is that she would have gotten a salary 1/10 of what she was making there.

So she played the american justice system very intelligently. But this is all OK - if anything that is not what is causing the resentment.

There is also a case of overreach here. The woman has a case in India registered because she went absconding. Now let's take this in context - India is the only country which has suffered worse in international terrorism. So a maid going AWOL in the US is a pretty big deal.

what the American embassy did was unbelievable - get US visas for the whole family of the maid and fly her to the US without going through the Indian authorities.

This has everyone pissed mad coming after the heels of the Americans denying access to 26/11 accused Headley. Ergo the anger.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#106

Post by kamakazizuru »

nols wrote: post #40
sleepyK wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Raymond Davis went scot free when the Americans claimed that he had diplomatic immunity. Let's just take this for what it was, a District Attorney trying to gain as much publicity as possible. The Saudis have been committing graver abuse of their domestic help for years, but nobody in America has had the balls to come out and cavity search an oil rich Saudi yet.

Raymond Davis didn't go scot free when the US claimed he had diplomatic immunity, he was imprisoned by Pakistan.

right - but released shortly after - and never strip searched.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#108

Post by wozniacki »

bitops wrote: post #62
mjn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, when I go to a restaurant, I am being 'served', but after the waiter gets off work he's a full and equal neighbor of mine under both law and custom. That's definitely true. An interesting cultural difference even further in that direction, that I noticed as an American who moved to Denmark, is that in Scandinavia the equality extends even into the restaurant. I'm not really being "served" at a restaurant,…

Heh...as a Danish person, I think part of that distinction also is that Denmark has a really bad service culture compared to the US. It does seem to be changing. But I feel like Danes are a pretty proud (and/or headstrong) folk with very strong (and sometimes misguided, see Janteloven) notions around class and equality. I feel like many Danes who work in the service sector project this attitude that they're really ab…

Under Janteloven:

The ten rules state:

  You're not to think you are anything special.
  You're not to think you are as good as us.
  You're not to think you are smarter than us.
  You're not to convince yourself that you are better than
  us.
  You're not to think you know more than us.
  You're not to think you are better than us.
  You're not to think you are good at anything.
  You're not to laugh at us.
  You're not to think anyone cares about you.
  You're not to think you can teach us anything.*
Wow. Just wow. Needless to say, a lot of American go-getters and super-achievers would find that bitterly stultifying.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante#Definition

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#109

Post by winstonx »

akshtest wrote: post #41

Typical idiotic argument by NYTimes, As someone who had multiple servants working at my home (a cook and cleaner), so that my mother could work at her job. I find the argument "If you can't pay a decent wage, don't hire one" idiotic. Wages are determined by market, and in case of our house, we routinely had to give a raise as well as bonus near holidays. Simply because reliable servants are hard to find. Who determin…

I think the disconnect between the author and you is that the author has empathy for impoverished people.

Try to understand their plight. They are born poor and die poor. Why? Because they were unlucky enough to be born poor. You were lucky to be born into a family that could afford servants.

Re: Having a Servant Is Not a Right

#110

Post by kamakazizuru »

tokipin wrote: post #65
akshtest wrote: post #41

Typical idiotic argument by NYTimes, As someone who had multiple servants working at my home (a cook and cleaner), so that my mother could work at her job. I find the argument "If you can't pay a decent wage, don't hire one" idiotic. Wages are determined by market, and in case of our house, we routinely had to give a raise as well as bonus near holidays. Simply because reliable servants are hard to find. Who determin…

i don't understand. for years my mom worked at her job (12hrs night shift, hard labor, without most of her fingers on one hand which she lost in an accident), cooked and cleaned, and took care of her young children

while I respect what your mom did. I think the point the OP is trying to make is that - there were people willing to work for the amount of money that his mother could afford to pay for them to do it. Its really not any different from when you hire people on Mechanical Turk to solve tasks that you're time isnt worth spending on.
Post reply on HN