I doubt anybody will agree with me on this. But here goes.
My paternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather were living when I was a child. My grandmother was a middle class widow and my grandfather was a farmer. My grandmother had a maid who came in every few days or so to clean, do laundry and such. Cleaning an old lady’s house is not exactly back-breaking work, and the lady could make her own hours pretty much. They ate meals together, with my grandmother providing the food. Often there was some for her the helper to take home. My grandmother was very big on baking, and would bake a lot more than she could eat by herself.
My grandfather hired men all the time; some long term some short term. It was definitely harder work, mostly outdoors, but he paid well.
My wife works and so do I. She’s tired when she gets home. I never am able to get around to all the things I need to do because I’m often gone.
Both of us would be more than glad to hire domestic help. But it’s really hard to do because you have to deal with withholding, workers’ comp insurance, unemployment insurance, etc. I also have a modest ranch and I do hire a fair amount of contract labor, but guess what? There is a new IRS rule that if I pay any one person more than $600/year, I have to get his SSN and file a 1099 on him. And forget about having a tenant/laborer. Massively troublesome unless you are really wealthy. Ask a “work for cash” person for his SSN and likely as not you’ll get a false number or never see him again. Soooo, despite the fact that I have work and am willing to pay well, it’s just easier for my grown son and me to do the work ourselves (and less than we would prefer) for the most part. Domestic and farm labor are affordable to a lot of people, but the hassle isn’t. It adds a great deal to the cost and trouble. Only the really well to do can afford such things.
What would be so terrible if the government excused potential employers for all of that for strictly domestic and farm work? What if the older lady could just pay the domestic at the end of the day or the week and that simply be that? Unemployed people aren’t paying taxes anyway. They aren’t paying social security, and their medical is taken care of by Medicaid.
And I would be willing to bet that the unemployed single mothers could get work as well in that kind of arrangement, possibly even without government paid daycare. I know lots of women who would take care of children for very little, but there’s the licensing and the withholding and the Medicare tax and the workers’ compensation and the unemployment compensation. On and on and on. And besides, a fair number of householders would put up with the domestic bringing a child or two along if they were reasonably well-behaved and had entertainments onsite to hold their attention.
And just maybe some older people would not have to go into special living arrangements quite so early if they could hire a maid and a handyman now and then and just pay them in cash. Old people even used to have live-in help. Quite ordinary old people. The live-ins got bed and board and pay.
Would it really be so terrible if the government told “welfare mothers” or whomever, that they could, or even had to, in the case of the physically able, earn cash as domestics without having to pay taxes on it and still access such additional benefits on a sliding scale, e.g., Medicaid? Would it be so awful if men or women could do farm work for cash without all the red tape, and still be covered for at least medical?
Finally, and maybe I’ll get deluged with objections to this. When I was a kid I picked strawberries for six cents a quart, and was glad to get it. Last spring I picked for my own family in a combined “pick your own” or “buy” place. Nice patch owned by a Mexican guy. He had two local kids (white) working there picking. Obviously local kids. One was probably 16, the other surely wasn’t. Those kids were getting $1.25/quart to pick, as I recall. The Mexican guy was selling them for $2.75 or $3.00/quart and could sell every one he had. Now, a kid who works hard at it can pick anywhere from 25 quarts/day up to about a maximum of 100 quarts. Those kids weren’t ragged or beat up looking. They were just enterprising kids who knew a good thing when they saw it.
But while the law allows the 16 year old to pick, it doesn’t allow the younger kid to pick. But what kind of sense does it make to keep, say, a 12 year old from making anywhere from $30 to $100 per day when he wants to do it? It’s only about three weeks/year. Yes, adults could do it instead, but most adults have jobs they have to go to and can’t just quit to do seasonal work. Besides, kids are better at it than adults are. They don’t get stiff and sore the way adults do who aren’t used to it. And consumers can get fresh sun-ripened strawberries right off the vine.
Oh well. Make the kids sit at home watching tv or playing video games or roam the street.
I know, I know. “Can’t be done”
