5 ms·

I'm not from India but I spend a lot of time there. Most people don't have a full time maid. They have a maid who comes daily (or maybe 3x/week) and also works

I'm not from India but I spend a lot of time there. Most people don't have a full time maid. They have a maid who comes daily (or maybe 3x/week) and also works for others. This is quite feasible economically in the US - suppose cleaning a home takes 2 hours and a maid accepts $10/hour. That's $20/day or $430/month (assuming 5x/week). So in the US you could get comparable levels of service for maybe $1000/month. It's just not feasible right now because maids cost a lot more than $10/hour. A maid working 10 hours/day, 5 days/week would be earning $2150/month. For comparison, US GDP/capita works out to $4,400/month. (Mean wage/compensation is a bit lower than this.) But you don't even need to look at money to determine this is feasible. You just need to count. Take the number of people sitting around on welfare/disability fraud/etc, multiply by the number of houses they could clean each day, and you can determine how many maids the US could have.

PeterisP 10y ago
The thing is, there really isn't a market for a huge number of maids when it costs $1000/month, and you can't really go below that because, as you say, $10/hour.. about the minimum wage in many places. The middle class in USA definitelly can't afford to pay $12k/year (plus taxes!) for such a service. The most highly paid white collar professions would generally scoff at such an expense. At best, the top 1% could afford that, but they don't employ that much maids because there's not so many so rich people.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The middle class in the USA is already paying for such a service! When you pay taxes, the bulk of it is just redistributed to people who don't work. All I'm proposing is that we restructure things so that instead of getting nothing for your money you get something.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > When you pay taxes, the bulk of it is just redistributed to people who don't work. Okay, there's a sense in which that's true, but... > All I'm proposing is that we restructure things so that instead of getting nothing for your money you get something. The problem with that (aside from any other problems with the whole "basic job" idea) is that the only sense in which it the preceding claim is true is if you count medical and contribution-qualified programs for the aged and disabled (which are the bulk of payments "to people who don't work".) I mean, this characterization is ludicrous unless your plan is to drag people out of nursing homes to serve in your Basic Job Army.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Are you seriously claiming that the only non-working government dependents are the elderly and disabled? I've linked to this expose by NPR on disability fraud before: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Are you seriously claiming that the only non-working government dependents are the elderly and disabled? I'm saying that the overwhelming majority of government spending on the non-working is benefits to the aged and disabled. SS and Medicare alone are the majority of such spending, and go exclusively to that group, and overwhelming to the aged specifically; the next big chunk is Medicaid (at least, the portion that goes to people that aren't working, some Medicaid beneficiaries are low-income but employed) which, while income qualified, has a very significant fraction of its expenses go to Medicaid/Medicare dual eligibles. And, so, to the extent that your pointing to the share of government spending that goes to the non-working is intended as something other than a red herring, it only makes sense if you plan on dragging the aged and disabled into your forced labor army as a condition of their continued survival.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    I know this is an old thread that I'm unlikely to get a response to, but I can't tell whether you're proposing a federal make-work program or a free-market restructuring. If the latter, you seem to be ignoring the demand side of the equation, which makes your whole proposal unworkable - there isn't demand for this in the US, and not just for financial reasons, the middle class here is unlikely to employ (what we see as) servants for social reasons as well. If you're proposing a make-work program where tax dollars go toward putting people to work, maybe that's a good idea, but I'd rather see those people working on improving our crumbling infrastructure, or perhaps on creating new high-speed rail, than cleaning middle class houses.
burkaman 10y ago
You can't just look at the supply side. It's hard to imagine there's very much demand for $500-$1000/month maid services, especially in areas where all these people on welfare live. Also, do you know anyone on welfare in the US? Do they really seem like they're "sitting around" to you?
kamaal 10y ago
Its possible only because human labor is cheap. And that is because those people have nothing else to do. Population is high, resources are scanty. People will do whatever they can to make a living. But in most urban metros, cost of human labor is only going up. Washing machines are all over the places, dryers which were absent even a few years back are showing up. Robot vacuum cleaners are replacing few-hours/day maids all the time. This is even more so in high rising apartments. Maid culture and personal servant culture in India is ending with urban living.

PeterisP 10y ago

The thing is, there really isn't a market for a huge number of maids when it costs $1000/month, and you can't really go below that because, as you say, $10/hour.. about the minimum wage in many places. The middle class in USA definitelly can't afford to pay $12k/year (plus taxes!) for such a service. The most highly paid white collar professions would generally scoff at such an expense. At best, the top 1% could afford that, but they don't employ that much maids because there's not so many so rich people.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The middle class in the USA is already paying for such a service! When you pay taxes, the bulk of it is just redistributed to people who don't work. All I'm proposing is that we restructure things so that instead of getting nothing for your money you get something.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > When you pay taxes, the bulk of it is just redistributed to people who don't work. Okay, there's a sense in which that's true, but... > All I'm proposing is that we restructure things so that instead of getting nothing for your money you get something. The problem with that (aside from any other problems with the whole "basic job" idea) is that the only sense in which it the preceding claim is true is if you count medical and contribution-qualified programs for the aged and disabled (which are the bulk of payments "to people who don't work".) I mean, this characterization is ludicrous unless your plan is to drag people out of nursing homes to serve in your Basic Job Army.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Are you seriously claiming that the only non-working government dependents are the elderly and disabled? I've linked to this expose by NPR on disability fraud before: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Are you seriously claiming that the only non-working government dependents are the elderly and disabled? I'm saying that the overwhelming majority of government spending on the non-working is benefits to the aged and disabled. SS and Medicare alone are the majority of such spending, and go exclusively to that group, and overwhelming to the aged specifically; the next big chunk is Medicaid (at least, the portion that goes to people that aren't working, some Medicaid beneficiaries are low-income but employed) which, while income qualified, has a very significant fraction of its expenses go to Medicaid/Medicare dual eligibles. And, so, to the extent that your pointing to the share of government spending that goes to the non-working is intended as something other than a red herring, it only makes sense if you plan on dragging the aged and disabled into your forced labor army as a condition of their continued survival.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  I know this is an old thread that I'm unlikely to get a response to, but I can't tell whether you're proposing a federal make-work program or a free-market restructuring. If the latter, you seem to be ignoring the demand side of the equation, which makes your whole proposal unworkable - there isn't demand for this in the US, and not just for financial reasons, the middle class here is unlikely to employ (what we see as) servants for social reasons as well. If you're proposing a make-work program where tax dollars go toward putting people to work, maybe that's a good idea, but I'd rather see those people working on improving our crumbling infrastructure, or perhaps on creating new high-speed rail, than cleaning middle class houses.

burkaman 10y ago

You can't just look at the supply side. It's hard to imagine there's very much demand for $500-$1000/month maid services, especially in areas where all these people on welfare live. Also, do you know anyone on welfare in the US? Do they really seem like they're "sitting around" to you?

kamaal 10y ago

Its possible only because human labor is cheap. And that is because those people have nothing else to do. Population is high, resources are scanty. People will do whatever they can to make a living. But in most urban metros, cost of human labor is only going up. Washing machines are all over the places, dryers which were absent even a few years back are showing up. Robot vacuum cleaners are replacing few-hours/day maids all the time. This is even more so in high rising apartments. Maid culture and personal servant culture in India is ending with urban living.