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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

In Mexico, for example, most middle-class people hire maids, nannies, etc. Even the poor hire poorer people to work for them. To some extent, I think, that reflects less segregation of rich and poor. But also, I think that there's something odd about American culture. People will pay to have their vehicle repaired, but not to have their home cleaned.

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It's the legacy of slavery. People are very uncomfortable with things that look kinda like it. The things that are actually like it (our prison system) comparatively pass unnoticed.

Perhaps. But I suspect that it's more general than that. Maybe it violates the ideal of equality. At Starbucks or Walmart, it's easy to pretend that workers are paid well enough. But when you're paying, it's in your face.

I mean if we're pulling reasons out of our asses, I like the idea that it's because shitty public transportation and geographic spread of more affluent areas makes the whole thing much less feasible.

When I pay to have something repaired, that's a job I couldn't do myself, or at least it would inefficient for me to learn.

Paying to have my home cleaned feels uncomfortable because it's something I could do myself, so it makes it very obvious that my time is being valued more by society than the cleaner's.

I'm a consultant. When I'm maxed, I defer what I can, and then I pay people to deal with whatever I can't defer. If I have some slack, I do more myself. Especially what I enjoy.

I generally find people who work for cash, and we negotiate fair prices.

> When I pay to have something repaired, that's a job I couldn't do myself, or at least it would inefficient for me to learn.

I don't think that works as an explanation. I have no compunction about buying hot food even though I can cook myself, and I'm sure I could easily have learned to repair a couple of things I paid to have repaired for me.

Well I don't think the food comparison is entirely fair (it would take me a long time to learn to cook all the kinds of food I want to eat), but my point is more about perceptions.

In most service industries, you have people serving many different customers at once in a way that's usually more efficient than every individual doing the work. But if I pay for a cleaner, I'm paying someone to spend time doing almost exactly what I would do otherwise. They're probably slightly faster than I would be, but otherwise there are no economies of scale obscuring the inequality, and that's what makes a lot of people uncomfortable with it.

Like Philippines then. I imagine it came from the Spanish?

I don't think that it's unique to the Spanish.

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