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Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

notesonliberty.com

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Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#81

Post by orkon »

dtjohnnyb wrote: post #77
orkon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have read somewhere that inflation in the end of the 17th - first half of 18th century was almost zero or there was even a deflation. I may be wrong. Maybe someone has a good source?

The book mentioned in the article, Capital in the 21st Century, shows this in really interesting detail. I can't remember the details myself, but the idea we have of inflation being normal is actually highly abnormal in the history of humanity. Can't recommend the book enough, really interesting to see how unique the last 100 years of high growth is compared to history due to the world wars and how we may be returnin…

Yes, it was from this book I believe. Also found this http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP03-... where it seems like retail prices where relatively stable at that time.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#82

Post by benj111 »

dmurray wrote: post #55
benj111 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but my paper says one franc in 1830 was about £2.2" 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.

> Pounds carried over with the same value during decimalisation, I havent found anything about the Franc changing The French Franc was revalued 100-1 in 1960. It's in the second line of the Wikipedia page on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_franc

So one New Franc was worth £220 and is 'currently' worth 10p?

So the best case is the parent already talking about New Francs, in which case my maths was already right.

Or have I made a glaring error ???

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#83

Post by pmyteh »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #57
Animats wrote: post #28

"Never sell consols." - The Forsyte Saga. The British government finally redeemed its last consols in 2015.

I had thought about buying some consols for my ISA (tax free investment account) the year or so before - my ISA was/is a bit stock heavy. They where at around £80-85 and where redeemed at par £100 so would have been a nice little earner.

Interesting. Do you know why the government didn't simply buy them on the open market when they came up and retire them? A 20% premium seems like quite a lot.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#84

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

danans wrote: post #79
conjectures wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation figures over 200 years are pretty dodgy. How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. Conversely Darcy would have had far more power than the someone with net worth £16.8-28m would today. He'd probably have had a large say in who the local MP was, the local priest. Probably could tur…

Your examples have an interesting pattern. > How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. One's wealthiness is always relative to others. The items listed here are goods that are broadly available today across wealth bands, and are therefore not markers of wealthiness. > Conversely Darcy would…

Slavery would seem to be a pretty straightforward example of such a market?

https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery2009.php

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#85

Post by ghaff »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
ghaff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure any sensible person would. If only because you'd be rolling a huge pair of dice with respect to health care, dental care, etc. Your children have decent odds of dying young. Women in childbirth. Infections. No modern dental care etc. Sure, some made it to old age without serious problems. (And people die young today in spite of modern medicine.) But I'll take the bet on today's medicine.

It's not just that. Most everything you did was physical. No indoor plumbing. No ice cream. No fresh vegetables in winter. Itchy clothes. Hardly any books. Travel was difficult, slow, and quite uncomfortable. Lousy shoes. No A/C. Roasting or freezing indoors in winter. Little information about what was happening more than a day's walk away. A rotting mouth. No movies.

Hence "if only." Given sufficient money, you could still have a pleasant life with plenty of entertainment options and reasonable comfort in many climates. [ADDED: Which Virginia is not especially.]

And does what's happening far away really have that much of an impact on my life even today? We're used to knowing all these things but information flow was a lot less even a few decades ago.

For me, dying/pain/etc. is a lot more relevant.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#86

Post by paulsutter »

devchix wrote: post #3

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…

Top 1% in the US is $421k a year, and top 1% in the world is $32,400 a year[1]

Also note that Mr Darcy need only sit and drink tea to receive his income.

> Pathetic! Not even a one-percenter. I would not walk three dirt miles and muddy the hem of my dress and suffer a terrible cold for half that

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/05061...

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#87

Post by C1sc0cat »

pmyteh wrote: post #83
C1sc0cat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had thought about buying some consols for my ISA (tax free investment account) the year or so before - my ISA was/is a bit stock heavy. They where at around £80-85 and where redeemed at par £100 so would have been a nice little earner.

Interesting. Do you know why the government didn't simply buy them on the open market when they came up and retire them? A 20% premium seems like quite a lot.

Yes did seem odd - it might have been they wanted to get rid of consols - they are perpetuals so they never expired BTW

Though as it would have been old money and savvy investors who had them and would benefit does make you think eh

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#88

Post by dmurray »

benj111 wrote: post #82
dmurray wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pounds carried over with the same value during decimalisation, I havent found anything about the Franc changing The French Franc was revalued 100-1 in 1960. It's in the second line of the Wikipedia page on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_franc

So one New Franc was worth £220 and is 'currently' worth 10p? So the best case is the parent already talking about New Francs, in which case my maths was already right. Or have I made a glaring error ???

I think you're correct that the franc has hugely devalued against the pound in that time. But based on the context from the first paragraph, devchix's post was talking about something different, equating one 1830 franc to £2.2 in today's money, possibly by a "wildly inaccurate" methodology.

The historical exchange rate should not be hard to figure out. Both countries were on a gold standard at that time. One 1830 franc was worth 290mg of gold. One 1830 sovereign was worth 7.3g of gold, or about 25 old francs. So using 1 pound = 10 new francs = 1000 old francs, that's about a 40x decline in the franc/pound rate between 1830 and 2000, unless I've made an error somewhere.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#89

Post by roenxi »

danans wrote: post #79
conjectures wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation figures over 200 years are pretty dodgy. How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. Conversely Darcy would have had far more power than the someone with net worth £16.8-28m would today. He'd probably have had a large say in who the local MP was, the local priest. Probably could tur…

Your examples have an interesting pattern. > How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. One's wealthiness is always relative to others. The items listed here are goods that are broadly available today across wealth bands, and are therefore not markers of wealthiness. > Conversely Darcy would…

> One's wealthiness is always relative to others.

That isn't the case, wealth is an absolute measure. Inequality, power and to some degree satisfaction are relative to others, but wealth can be created and destroyed independently. Which is the major argument against socialism, incidentally. If wealthiness were a relative measure, full blown communism would be great for wealth. Which it most certainly is not.

Modern inhabitants of the first world are insanely wealthy.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#90

Post by jimmy6DOF »

devchix wrote: post #3

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…

So, Tim Harford from the BBC/FT did a radio show on this and they say:

Darcy's 10K can be: 1. Inflation adjusted to 838K GBP 2. Earnings power adjusted (as labor purchase price parity) to 9.995M GBP 3. Adjusted by a Per Capita GDP percentile factor to 65M GBP (or income off of capital assets/'Consols' of $3B GBP)

BBC More or Less Podcast: How Rich was Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csvq3g PS- They basically mirror the NOL guy's article's antecedent from '016

And whatever happened to tracking how much money bill gates could drop and not pick up due to the value of his time ? { 1999: https://www.templetons.com/brad/billg.html ;} That was a good frame of reference.

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