41–50 of 120 posts
Much like modern fading businesses they had an addiction to cheap labour to prop up dated capital. Then when the mills and the mines and the factories turned up paying better wages, most of them failed to adapt. If they were lucky they sold out to the National Trust.
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I looked into buying a small estate in the midlands about 6 years ago and the price was around £1.5mm and upkeep was something like 500k/yr. I passed.
Why was upkeep that expensive? Would you be maintaining the entire estate as a perfectly manicured garden?
I want to understand the fascination with Jane Austen's works, especially by hackers and designers (and an economist in this article). Paul Graham (founder of Hacker News) mentions Jane Austen in at least 5 essays, see below. I haven't read any of Austen's books, but I think I'll need to. (1) "Everyone admires Jane Austen. Add my name to the list. To me she seems the best novelist of all time. I'm interested in how t…
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Dickens had a fascination with poverty and its effects, but he did not have a fascination with wealth and its technical details. For him a wealthy person was someone who could, on a whim, help out a poor child or go on a merry adventure.
Is this really true? Mr. Pickwick is a not-poor man who ends up in debtors prison for alleged "breach of promise" to marry his landlady. Wealthy Steerforth is a central character in David Copperfield and so on.
But essentially the wealthy characters have no focus on the mechanics of their wealth, other authors might say how much a character makes per year, what they are primarily invested in, how much of the wealth came from what things, what the coming war means for their investments. For Pickwick it is enough that they are wealthy and can do what wealthy people do. Pickwick in debtor's prison is a chance for him to focus on how the poor are generally treated from the viewpoint of a sympathetic rich character, as well as having an amusing situation "rich man in debtor's prison".
Even Scrooge, he lends money at exorbitant rates, underpays his employee, and does not use any money for his own enjoyment. No focus really on how the business works.
“My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?" "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Elizabeth already knew Mr. Darcy's income and despised him. It was upon learning of his we…
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Is this really true? Mr. Pickwick is a not-poor man who ends up in debtors prison for alleged "breach of promise" to marry his landlady. Wealthy Steerforth is a central character in David Copperfield and so on.
I would say yes it's true, other than I didn't talk about the villains where their wealth is generally seen as a constrictor of their moral nature. But essentially the wealthy characters have no focus on the mechanics of their wealth, other authors might say how much a character makes per year, what they are primarily invested in, how much of the wealth came from what things, what the coming war means for their inves…
Consols schmonsols! The modern prospector such as Mrs. Bennet would want to know how much is that in today's money. Using the Bank of England's trusty inflation calculator and plugging in 1813 (the year Pride and Prejudice was published), Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? Using the annual yield to derive asset, the…
My rule of thumb pre Euro was 10 (French) Francs to the £, so one Franc being worth 10p.
Pounds carried over with the same value during decimalisation, I havent found anything about the Franc changing so if true this is quite a devaluation over the years.
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> Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? One big difference being, when he dies, that income reverts to his heirs and their heirs. If he was earning that as a wage, it wouldn't. So it's not directly comparable.
True, the income comparison is spurious, but the followup statistic is directly comparable: > Using the annual yield to derive asset [value], the author in another paper put Darcy's net worth at £16.8m - £28m.
I couldn't go out and buy low risk Gilts and get that income today, I'd need index linked gilts, and they wouldn't be paying 3% after inflation.
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Dickens had a fascination with poverty and its effects, but he did not have a fascination with wealth and its technical details. For him a wealthy person was someone who could, on a whim, help out a poor child or go on a merry adventure.
Is this really true? Mr. Pickwick is a not-poor man who ends up in debtors prison for alleged "breach of promise" to marry his landlady. Wealthy Steerforth is a central character in David Copperfield and so on.
He does not do anything for his wealth, the wealth does not force him to attend board meetings or consider what competitors will do in other regions or how the slow down in the business means he will have to lay off workers or sell some of his land. The wealth allows him to have merry adventures with a pretty girl until he dies.
In Dickens it seems wealthy people never lose wealth by bad decisions or new technologies supplanting what they had or ships failing to deliver cargo on time, they tend to loose wealth by profligacy in either gambling or drink but generally both.
This is not a fault in Dickens, not everyone has to focus on the mechanics of wealth. Indeed perhaps his keeping away from such details helps hold the atmosphere of the fantastical that clings to his works, and has allowed them to keep being read so long.
The details of businesses that no longer would be viable probably make for dreary literature.
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I would say yes it's true, other than I didn't talk about the villains where their wealth is generally seen as a constrictor of their moral nature. But essentially the wealthy characters have no focus on the mechanics of their wealth, other authors might say how much a character makes per year, what they are primarily invested in, how much of the wealth came from what things, what the coming war means for their inves…
Pickwick is not a villain. But yeah, I suppose we can reasonably hairsplit over 'mechanics of wealth'; to me 'did not have a fascination with wealth' seems almost axiomatically impossible for a Victorian writer.