I don't know if I had a 'brilliant' (said in English accent) realization or if it just nonsense coming to me, but yesterday I thought that maybe the Flemish people hire people to do their work (shopping, ironing, yards, cleaning) as a way to help the 'lower-class' citizens (aka ME)? I always thought it was just because they don't want to do the work themselves, but want to have everything perfect (like a weekly, mopped garage).
Belgium is big on solidarity; it is one of the 3 pillars of the country. I did not understand this at first, but now I am getting it. Boiled down, it means if you have something, you use it to help someone else (this can be forced by way of taxes). Of course it can be highly abused, but that is frowned upon.
So I thought maybe people hire other people, because it is a way to give money to people without just handing it to them? ...or you just don't like to clean toilets and prune the bushes.
I think here people hire people because they are either too busy or too lazy to do the work themselves. However, when there are kids looking for jobs to do, usually people will pay them to cut the grass or shovel the driveway. There's a great quote in Arguing With Idiots that says something about how in America we don't need the government to hand out money to people because there are always people willing to help others out. Something like that. :)
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