> And a poor one, because it locks people in that status and heteronomy What is the current alternative? Are they any better? When I was kid growing up (in Br

> And a poor one, because it locks people in that status and heteronomy What is the current alternative? Are they any better? When I was kid growing up (in Brazil), we had a live-in housekeeper. She moved to São Paulo from some poor rural area in the South of Brazil. As many people from poor rural areas, she was forced to drop out of school on 3rd grade to help her family. If I remember it correctly, she was 21, 22 years old when she first moved in. The agreement was she would get minimum wage + regular benefits + free housing. She would work from ~7:30am until 3pm, get a break in the afternoon and then go to night school from 7 to 10pm. On weekends she was free, so she could either be out with her friends or coming along our weekend camping trips. She worked with us for 5-6 years, finished school, moved out of our home when she got married. Had two daughters, the oldest one just finished college. I know all that because 30+ years later my mom and her still keep in touch. Possibly stories like these are not the majority, but they were pretty common. Today, this would be unthinkable not because economic inequality has diminished, but because whatever we had that passed for "middle class" in Brazil got completely squeezed out by governments over the last 25 years.