FOr the record Caroline, dear, THERE IS NO SANTA.

In Australia we have the Christmas Curlew.

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/coverington/index.php/theaustralian/comments/getting_your_claus_into_consumption/

Alleviate third world poverty – spend! spend! spend!

Interesting but not necessarily accurate. Where I am now, it is virtually an obligation to hire a “nanny” if you have children. Minimum wages are set by the central government but few if any pay that lowest figure.

As an expat you are expected to provide as much employment as possible in the community and for want of a better term spread the wealth. That does not make someone in and by itself an exploiter of others.
(I am not however excusing those miserable shits in Singapore and other places who take the whole family to Mc’s, all the family eating away, while the maid looks on and holds the baby)

The children don’t become spoilt brats because they have a nanny, they become a spoiled brat because they have lousy parents in the first place.

Vanished, but not gone, however. You can read Ms Ove’s article in full at Audrey and the Bad Apples:

http://audreyapple.blogspot.com/2006/12/audrey-apple-and-case-of-odious-ove.html

It’s that last clause that bothers me the most. The steady and increasing growth of ‘remittance economies’ throughout the Third World is maybe an even bigger problem than the so-called ‘brain drain.’ Entire countries structure their finances on the sheer, dumb expectation of checks sent back home, from poor people whom they have effectively forced out of their native land through the home country’s incompetence. Yes, it’s a free-market transaction in a manner of speaking, but then so is the crack-whore trade. Instead of improving their own internal economic-political structure, some Third World governments just keep bingeing on stupidity and corruption, and hoping that their hard-working overseas relatives will keep them afloat. Think of it — an economy based on sentimental attractions! It’s pathetic, and these governments ought to start being called on it. Remittances from immigrants and guest-workers back to foreign countries should be heavily taxed, just to wean these imbecile governments off their crutches and make them start finding practical solutions to take care of their own people.

GregM: “Mangoes are easy to peel when they’re unripened. which is the way they are often eaten in Cambodia (served with a dry salt and chilli dip…”

Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it
With white wine, sugar, and lime juice.
Then bring it, after we’ve drunk the Moselle,
To the thickest shade of the garden…

–Wallace Stevens

See, even poets like their mangoes prepared funny…

Their dad/uncle (it was a rather large and extended family) was pretty high up with the SP Beer Company, flush with money and had sent his family down to Aust for the educational opportunities.

The ironic thing is that, by comparision, we were the poor ones by miles!!)

Just because we’re importing services rather than goods doesn’t make your self-righteous crusade to protect the ‘global underclass’ as you put it any more valid.

This is quite illogical.

What you mean to say is:

The importation of cheap products made by exploited labour renders hypocritical a “crusade” to prevent the importation of providers of cheap services.

And this isn’t true.

Persons who are employed to make cheap products in their own countries have the option of political action to change the conditions of their work. This is true even though their freedom of action may be circumscribed by local law.

Yet, when they are transported to another country “guest workers” immediately lose rights relative to the people among whom they live. Their existence as political beings is more or less expunged.

Therefore the parallel asserted is factually incorrect.