[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.

[lotsofpulp]

I do not even know how to respond to a comparison of the quality of life for an employee in the tech sector to a housekeeper or driver in a developing country.

One has weekends and holidays, can send their kids to fancy schools, go on international vacations, choose to retire by 40, has access to great healthcare, choose to work a different profession or their hobby or whatever they want.

[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.