Justifying Legal Behavior...

We need to find a new caregiver for 1 day a week for our kids and also a new person to help clean our house.

We were at a lunch recently where the topic of domestic help came up and I mentioned "hey, we're looking for someone." One person said, "oh, you should use mine, she's terrific." I left the room to help with the kids for 1 minute and when I returned, one woman said to me, "Why do you have to hire someone who is legal?"

Immediately, I was on the defensive and said, "well, Tamar does work for the Federal Government, you know."
"It's not like she's running for Senate or anything," was the reply.

The conversation eventually moved on and only later, upon reflecting, did I start to think about the conversation and realized what had happened.

In how many other topics, do you need to defend yourself for following the law?

Certainly, I've broken the law before, willingly in some cases (speed limit being the best example) and in college, I definitely remember one guy who refused to smoke Pot because he had political ambitions (this was around the time of the Clinton "I didn't inhale" comment), but no one gave him a hard time about it.

Far be it from me to judge other people because of which laws they choose to follow or ignore. That's a personal decision and if you want to risk the consequences, that's fine, but challenging someone to justify WHY they are are FOLLOWING the law just seems a bit crazy.

On the subject of domestic workers, I've got a side anecdote that dovetails with this discussion.

We paid unemployment insurance on the caregiver for our kids. Following our move to the house, I was so consumed with other activities that I missed the deadline for a quarterly filing and assessed a fee for $25.

I sent in my payment and a letter, which said essentially: "look, I'm just a regular guy paying taxes on a caregiver in my home and with all of the work with the move, I just missed the deadline. We both know that 99% of people don't do what I'm doing, can you please cut me some slack and waive the fee since I'm at least trying to do the right thing?"

They did.