"What I did not like was her taking cheap shots at the yuppie life styles - but that is hardly unique to Ehrenreich - it is the general tenor of the Left, which I hear time again in debates on urban renewal, service economy or labor issues. Denouncing yuppie life styles by many leftists seems disingenuous. Denouncing an entire socio-economic group (defined by their education and income level) belongs to the same genre as the old fashioned prejudice against Blacks, Irish, Italians, Jews or Poles, yet the later is strictly verboten.
"Bashing a broadly defined group of people is unacceptable under any circumstances, but in this particular circumstances it is also very myopic. Yuppie incomes can, after all, contribute to the shrinking urban tax base or create decent service jobs, which the culturalist/moralist take misses altogether." _____________________________________________ There’s a big slide here, from denouncing a life style to denouncing races. A life style is a set of behaviors, and is eminently subject to denunciation, whether it’s living in gated communities, sipping white wine and nibbling Brie, listening to NPR, and shopping Eddie Bauer, or living in trailer parks, guzzling Pabst and gnoshing on Nachos, listening to Lee Greenwood on Clear Channel, and going on Walmart sprees. More refined sensibilities? Trickle down effect, anyone?
I’ve refrained from entering this conversation till now because I haven’t yet read Ehrenreich’s book, but it seems to me there is a disconcerting problem about hiring cleaners in the current socio-economic circumstances that doesn’t exist in many other services (like plumbers or electricians). In theory, as Brad De Long pointed out, this is a mutually agreeable contract, in which the service provider chooses to work for additional money. Many differences in income don’t bother me much – it doesn’t strike me as a moral problem that some people can afford only small ranch houses while others can afford 10,000 sq. ft. mansions. So if a service provider wants to work longer hours to buy a bigger house, I may disagree with the priorities, but it’s her choice.
It does, however, bother me that many people can’t afford safe, decent housing of any kind. People with yuppie incomes, as Woj calls them, can meet decent living standards, and then can buy extra time in the form of paying other people to do necessary life maintenance tasks. The cleaners are generally not making enough money to meet decent living standards, and on top of that, still have to spend the time to do their own necessary life maintenance tasks. The bought time that the yuppie can spend reading, doing civic work, participating in friendship and family life, or just putting on airs, isn’t available to the cleaner.
It’s that basic result – in the most emotional example, the cleaner provides the yuppie mother with the time for more parenting, while her own child must forego her attention – that is problematic. Of course, when you start paying the cleaner as much as or more than you make yourself (my situation with plumbers’ and electricians’ hourly rates), it becomes a lot closer to a real choice, a truly mutually beneficial contract.
-- Gail, self-styled culturalist and moralist
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