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> "Imperialism used to extract the gold and other resources, now we are
> taking love from the poorer countries. Many of these women have to
leave
> their own children behind to come and work as childminders."
>
That argument seems to be flawed because it mixes up two different things: work for hire with moral judgment about certain life style.
Hiring a domestic servant is no different than, say, being served by a waiter in a restaurant, or wfor that matter a factory or an office worker. In both cases, waiting tables and cleaning houses, is paid work that in some respects or under certain circumstances may be preferable to that, say in a factory or an office (e.g. greater flexibility, easy to avoid paying imperial taxes). More importantly, it offers employment opportunity to people who otherwise would be unemployed. An "undocumented" waiter or maid can earn more money here than in her home country and that allows her/him to provide better living standard to her/his family at home. People who hire domestic servants are no different than any other employer, and thus should be judged by the same standards than any other employer.
The problem with denouncing employers of domestic servants (which Ehrenreich also does it in _Nickel and dimed_) is that they are no longer viewed as employers but as individuals whose life style does not meet puritanical moral standards, and that judgment is then attributed to the employment relation. There is a certain puritanical tendency to denounce people who lead "indulgent and decadent" life styles - and using services of others, rather than being puritanically "self-serving," is often construed as an epitome of such decadence. That moral judgment passed on a lifestyle of the employer is then attributed to the service employment relation and used to stipulate termination of that relation.
This is a faulty logic. A factory owner may use profit extracted from the factory workers to lead a parasitic and decadent life style, yet nobody would argue that the employment of factory workers should be terminated on those grounds. When it comes to service employment, however, such an unwarranted conclusion is being drawn. That is yet another indication that what passes for the Left in this country is often puritanical moralizing in disguise.
Wojtek