Entrepreneurialism and the working poor
Cathy Seipp’s latest column - and her blog commentary - on the topic of paid domestic help are well worth reading.
I’ve been thinking lately that not only is there is no way on earth that I would be able to re-adjust to not having a cleaner, should that ever become necessary (and LORD, I hope it does not), but that anyone who can afford a cleaner is downright silly not to have one. It just frees so much time for more productive and enjoyable things, and eases a great deal of potential relationship tension over domestic matters. People point out that you still have to do the work of preparing for the cleaner - organising the ironing pile and hangers, choosing which fresh bedding you want to be put on the beds, etc - but that is nothing compared to the hours you end up NOT bent over an ironing board, lugging a vacuum cleaner around the house, or washing windows.
As for the affordability, I think it extends to more people in the western world than not, but it depends on what you value. I’d happily sacrifice a nice restaurant meal every week for the freedom from domestic drudgery. And in general, cleaners earn better tips from me than waitstaff - because they care a lot more about their work and how they do it. That’s entrepreneurialism for you; restaurant owners tend to do better work than their own hired help, too. As Cathy writes:
[P]aleolefty true believers like Barbara Ehrenreich keep hammering away at social problems as if old-fashioned staff jobs were still the only ideal employment in the best of all possible worlds, and what a shame that such jobs are rapidly disappearing. Now I don’t think all problems of the working poor would be solved if more struck out as entrepreneurs, or considered alternate solutions. But is it really so heartless to imagine that some of them might be?
Only if you think that working for The Man - rather than working for whomever they so choose - is the best the working poor can hope to do in life.
Filed under: Life
People like Barbara Ehrenreich drive me nuts. I’ve been meaning to tear her a new one for her insane troll logic in this article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2144517/entry/2144614/
In it, she argues that replacing low-wage Best Buy jobs with high-wage Stereo Exchange jobs wouldn’t hurt the workers, because “Why wouldn’t the former Best Buy workers take a lot of these new and better jobs? They’re not all as clueless as you seem to think.”
BECAUSE THERE WOULDN’T BE AS MANY JOBS, BARBARA YOU IGNORANT SLUT!
At any rate, it boils my blood to hear people try to ban “demeaning” jobs that people VOLUNTARILY take. We’re not talking about slavery or indentured servitude here.
It’s called comparative advantage people. Maybe you heard about it in your Economics class?
These people have what I call a Dungeons & Dragons mentality–they think that the world is run based on rules, and that if you change one input into a situation, all the other ones stay constant.
“If wages are too low, raise the minimum wage.”
By this imbecilic line of reasoning, why not just print an extra $10,000,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Then we’d all be rich.
Morons.
Chris, I’m so glad that, at a time when I don’t have the energy to get as frothingly pissed off about this stuff as usual, you’re there to fill the gap - and so much more eloquently.
Also: I have about as much job security as my cleaner does, being a free agent. In fact, her income is probably more reliably predictable than mine, being as it is for regular work that doesn’t depend on strategies and projects (other than Operation Let’s Not Live in a Pigsty). And very few of the people I work for invite me to help myself to the contents of their fridge and cupboards, or give the occasional bouquet of flowers. But I don’t think the likes of Barbara Ehrenreich are going to be putting on telethons or public awareness campaigns about my plight anytime soon - and quite right, too. As you say, Chris, these people are just plain ignorant. Shame they’re using the public TV airwaves to push their brand of self-congratulatory rubbish.