[Loughla]

That's genuinely interesting. Here in my part of the states, you're expected to do it all yourself, and in my area (exceedingly rural and exceedingly low income) having anyone do some of those things would be seen as being stuck-up or snobbish or something to that effect. For example, I still catch grief for being a "rich bitch" from my neighbors because I hired someone to put a roof on my covered porch on the back of my house 6 or 7 years ago.

This may sound naive, but I had legitimately never considered that it's a valid and useful way to spread my opportunities through the community.

[hibikir]

The way of the American suburb is so different from cities in most of the world that the rest of the cultural differences seem natural. In places with this social bonding arrangements, you have contacts across social strata that fit people and jobs: Your friend's housekeeper is often a great contact for more good housekeeping. They might have friends and family members that need work in other occupations too, and thus entire social groups of people of different social classes bond together. You typically hire the people directly, not through a company, and personal reputation hits ripple through the social network. There might be people in-th-know, which act as brokers for the top opportunities without charging a cent.

I compare that to the American suburban experience, where most people who do manual work are considered too flakey to deal with directly, most tasks are nowhere near enough to count as a full time job, and everything is handled via companies led by people who code-switch. If I need a roofer or a landscaper, I will find few companies led by a mexican, or even someone with mexican ancestry, but their workers are almost assured to be: There's layers of isolation on top of layers of isolation, so you aren't building a relationship with your roofer, your handyman, or your housekeeper. The intermediaries make all of that work exchange have a very different nature.

On top of that, barring a small number of neighborhoods, there's a good chance you'll never see one of those workers outside of the contract, because the housing they can afford, and the housing they can afford, are so far apart you have few reasons to frequent the same establishments. So while places where more people live together might make it easier to see how different social classes are, in the US we might have a larger social distance, but completely hidden by housing. It's not just that the rich American can take their kids to a private school: It's that the way things are set up, the public schools for many a rich American will have few families who aren't rich in the first place, just via suburban zoning.

It's as if different social classes were happy to coexist in many other places, but in the US, they loathe each other, and can only interact via intermediaries.

[lotsofpulp]

>It's as if different social classes were happy to coexist in many other places, but in the US, they loathe each other, and can only interact via intermediaries.

Is it possible that the US is big enough and rich enough that it allows different social classes to not have to co exist, whereas in many other places, they have no choice but to co exist due to lack of land and other wealth?

[lotsofpulp]

> This may sound naive, but I had legitimately never considered that it's a valid and useful way to spread my opportunities through the community.

Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.

[FooBarBizBazz]

You must be playing the provocateur?

"Step 1: Everyone gets a Ph.D.

Step 2: Meals cook themselves!"

(I suppose we could all live on MREs?)

Knowledge isn't zero-sum, but credentials are. Educating everyone doesn't make "menial" jobs go away. Better, really, to recognize some of those jobs as more important, and be willing to pay for them.

Also, there are gains from trade, and economies of scale. The time to cook two meals is less than double the time to cook one. And the person who specializes in it is probably better at it than the person who specializes in some other thing. When things are working correctly, these gains are then distributed across society by exchange.

[lotsofpulp]

I wrote education, not credentials. That includes learning how to farm, be an electrician, a crane operator, a researcher, learning how to cook, it could be anything.

It is obvious that a society with widespread use of personal drivers/housekeepers/nannies is simply one with a wider income/wealth gap.

One option is to spend multiple generations slowing bringing the housekeepers kids up the ladder with the housekeeper’s meager savings, and then their kids, and so on. Or we can cut the crap, and redistribute wealth more quickly and directly via a public education/training system.

[pessimizer]

Ditches still have to be dug.

[lotsofpulp]

What I wrote does not preclude ditches being dug, or being a ditch digger. What it does is prevent ditch digging from being one of the few options for many people which result in ditch digging labor prices to be very low.

You give people opportunities to do many more things than menial labor, then that allows the price for menial labor to rise so that it is not done by the “lower” socioeconomic rungs.

[FooBarBizBazz]

This is a good argument, IMO. The main dangers I see are of status-signaling "non-skills" dominating education, and of overall malinvestment in skills that aren't needed.

[throwhauser]

> Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.

...and then a data scientist with an advanced degree spends the day hand-crafting SQL to root-cause a customer complaint after Bezos sends a one-byte email, "?"...

(EDIT: I may have focused on one aspect of the parent's point at the expense of the other, clarified below).

[lotsofpulp]

How is that relevant?

Is there any question that a housekeeper is better off if they were able to spend their time studying or training for something that offers a higher probability of earning higher incomes?

Or should society continue to perpetuate the relative socioeconomic class you are born into by having you spend your time washing other people’s clothes and homes?

[throwhauser]

Because you've combined two concerns, the amount of money people make, and what level of stratification is involved in making it. You can study, train, and improve your economic security considerably, but still end up essentially doing menial tasks for rich people, just for more money.

(EDIT: That said, upward economic mobility is always desirable and education is essential to achieving it. It's an escape from poverty, but it's not a foolproof escape from hierarchy).

[lotsofpulp]

> Because you've combined two concerns, the amount of money people make, and what level of stratification is involved in making it.

The two concerns are linked. You only see widespread personal drivers and housekeepers and gardeners in less developed countries with many very poor people. Reducing the stratification by redistributing wealth via taxes and an education system is preferable mechanism of spreading opportunity.

The societies telesilla and Blahah are referring to are not ones where a housekeeper works 40 hour weeks Mon to Fri and gets PTO and has time to get a law degree in the evenings.

These places have housekeepers and drivers because they are not fortunate to be born in a society with enough of a public education system that allows them to escape that fate, even if it is just being an accountant for a rich person, at least they get vacations and decent work hours and schedules.

[throwhauser]

> The societies telesilla and Blahah are referring to are not ones where a housekeeper works 40 hour weeks Mon to Fri and gets PTO

Nor is the "high-growth" tech sector, which is notorious for long hours and de-facto little time off. The money might be good, but the lifestyle can be miserable.

You're working for billionaires instead of millionaires, but you're still in a situation where a "?" from the top means you've got to hustle.

[pessimizer]

The more educated people, the more educated people doing menial tasks for other people. Menial tasks have to get done.

[lotsofpulp]

And they end up getting done by people themselves, in much of the developed world.

[dougmwne]

No, they end up getting done by armies of gig workers.

[lotsofpulp]

The vast, vast majority of Americans are doing their own laundry, house cleaning, gardening, and driving.

I know quite a few households in the $200k+ income, and no one has a driver, everyone does their own laundry, and only a few have a house cleaner come by every couple weeks.