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To: elmatador who wrote (18209)	5/13/2007 10:32:19 AM
From: Slagle	Respond to of 220240

Elmat, I think that you are missing something about the cultural aspects of domestic servitude in the US. Americans in general view having house servants as very "un-American" and even morally wrong. Most of us value our independence and just don't want a bunch of domestics to clutter up the household and to be a constant nuisance. In much of the world, having a houseboy or maid is a sort of status symbol. OTOH here in the USA you will notice that most people who have ever had domestics, say politicians and business leaders, will try as best they can to prevent public disclosure of this fact. In every third world place I have ever lived the first thing any little guy does, just as soon as he is able to afford it, is to take in a maid and a houseboy. He can't afford a car and only has a tiny house but he will still crowd the place with as many domestics as he can afford. Of course he pays them nearly nothing and they may have to sleep on the floor, but he gets them anyway. And of course the third world rich have great mobs of domestics in their way everywhere. My fathers generation invented "wash and wear" textiles, automatic washers, powered lawn mowers, microwave ovens and a whole bunch of other innovations to make the household easy to maintain. We really don't need domestics. Even groundskeeping, in the third world the rich will likely have some house servants down on their knees literally trimming the grass with scissors. Here, you have guys who run this like a business, with very fast "zero-turn" mowers going house to house, spending maybe twenty minutes on a big yard. Most folks mow their own, though. In the third world, there is the belief that having a maid or houseboy is a good thing, because you are "feeding the poor" by providing at least daily bread to folks who would otherwise go hungry. That sort of thinking is alien to my country. I hope it stays that way. Slagle