Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

fullstackeconomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 500 posts

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#41

Post by joe_the_user »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #16

Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3…

I had a fellow American friend who lived in Bali for a year in the mid-70s. When he arrived, he shopped for his own food and cooked it. But he found that, since the merchants charged people by their social class, he could hire a housekeeper and have them buy and cook his food for the same price as buying his own found. And people expect him to do this.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#42

Post by addaon »

divbzero wrote: post #34
addaon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's describing the iPad... with off-shored real-time tutoring providing most of the value. Even for the niche that can afford that (which should be larger than the niche that can afford in-person tutoring), I'm not aware of any services.

> with off-shored real-time tutoring providing most of the value Yes, a critical part of the Illustrated Primer was that it was paired with real-time tutoring by a remote human, and turned out to be most effective when the remote human was regularly the same person who cared for the child on the other end.

But, returning to the subject of the article, this is interesting.

Among my peers in the U.S. right now (upper middle class, tech heavy), live-in nannies and full time tutors are unheard of, as the article says. But friends who have families in lower labor cost areas (Mexico, Thailand) often do still have live-in help. Even though they're no higher on the relative income ladder in their countries than I am, the floor cost of labor is so much lower that this is still a reasonable -- and quite common -- option.

Meanwhile, early education is (to my extremely limited knowledge) not an area where one-on-one off-shoring facilitated by technology has really been explored. Seems like an interesting space.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#43

Post by Kon-Peki »

bombcar wrote: post #29
ijlx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Model T was released over a decade prior to the point mentioned in the article. Sure cars weren't the staple of American life they are today, but they were definitely accessible to the well-off people of the time.

They also weren’t as common - and so not as necessary. Those who wanted to could get one but it wasn’t considered a necessity when there were so many other options - including sending a servant to the market for your servants, so no need to drive yourself.

The article mentioned that the Christies lived in a 4th-floor walkup in London.

When I first moved to the big city, I quickly discovered that the cost of parking and insuring my car was more than the cost of the car. This scenario was most likely worse back in those days as the infrastructure was designed to “store” horses, not cars.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#44

Post by freddie_mercury »

paxys wrote: post #35
jerry1979 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, I imagine if you can find a maid at that price, you can certainly find a driver.

You'll still need to give them a car to drive.

Exactly. Everyone I know here with a driver owns the car themselves and hires the driver separately. I don't know driver salaries since I don't have one but I'm guessing they are similar to nanny salaries since they are usually full-time 8am-8pm, 6-days a week kind of jobs. The only people without their own car tend to be foreign executives who are only going to be here on a 2-3 year contract.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#45

Post by csours »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14

Baumol's cost disease has been discussed on HN a bunch in the past, but I really liked how the author reframed it as "Baumol's bonus", i.e. nannies are certainly not lamenting that they're getting paid more.

I've just read about it now and it reminds me of Universal Basic Income

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#46

Post by [deleted] »

addaon wrote: post #13
sgarman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feltin Diamond Age they were basically describing the iPad. We have that now but it's still not quite there. Maybe it's not personalized enough or comprehensive enough?

Well, it's describing the iPad... with off-shored real-time tutoring providing most of the value. Even for the niche that can afford that (which should be larger than the niche that can afford in-person tutoring), I'm not aware of any services.

[deleted]

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#47

Post by newyankee »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #16

Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3…

Same in India. For a lot of people Car is more of a status symbol and in some crowded cities it is much easier to take a 2 wheeler.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#48

Post by Karrot_Kream »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #31
kureikain wrote: post #7

off topic but in many stories of Agatha Christie why husband and wife never slept in same room? Is that how English people in the old day live, sleep in separate room even after marriage?

I read this is surprisingly common especially with older couples. People like to have their own space and when you get older comfort is more important because your body isn't what it used to be. Snoring, keeping separate hours, stealing blankets, freezing feet, etc. It all adds up. People don't need to sleep all night together to be a couple or to have sex. If anything, its kinda weird we are expected to share a bed…

> I also think the long-tail economics of capitalism is about shrinking worker entitlements to enrich capital holders. Not too long ago you'd have a house with a spare bedroom or two or three. Now you're huddling in a condo or apartment that's 1bd or two, if you have kids. So we romanticize having less because its easier than challenging the system.

This is way too sweeping a statement on the very complicated housing market that's constructing a strawman (capitalism is a system, it doesn't have long-term goals like a person does.) In the past, most women would not work, so the demand for jobs was nearly half of what it became once women started entering the workforce. As automation became more effective and manufacturing jobs became less necessary, regional centers of production became unnecessary (when you don't need to ship your output you don't need to have a center of hard goods in different physical locations) and jobs began to be concentrated in cities and metros with lots of highly educated labor. In America in particular, new housing construction plummeted after the early '70s and so housing around job centers became very expensive. That and several other macro trends contributed to making job centers in the US expensive to live in. There's plenty of cheap land/housing in the US still if a job is not a factor.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#49

Post by jacknews »

The point is how much money does it take today to have the equivalent wealth status in society as Christie.

It is almost certainly far more than $50,000, which is a tradesman's salary these days.

So, irrespective of what that money now buys, the true inflation figure (how much does it cost to live at a certain level in society) is far greater than the official figure.

Re: Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car

#50

Post by freddie_mercury »

csours wrote: post #39
freddie_mercury wrote: post #16

Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3…

Is there one single most common way of getting around where you are or is it a mix? I assume a lot of motorbikes. What about e-bikes?

Overwhelmingly combustion-engine motorbikes. Something like 7.5-8 million of them on the roads of Ho Chi Minh City.

There are e-bikes around but they aren't very common, at least in the south. Like, I see a few every day so they're not super rare. But...I see one or two a day compared to the thousands of regular ones.

There's also a bit of toxic masculinity around them; I'd say 99% of the people riding them are women. Most often high school or university age.

They are hampered by concerns about theft (it is relatively easy to steal the battery), range, and charging.

A newish brand tried to offer a premium e-bike[1] a few years back and you see them around but not very often.

Interestingly, I was in Hue on holiday a few years ago -- a city in the north -- and, at least in the city center where we were, it felt like it was 30% electric bikes. I don't know if there was a local government policy encouraging them or what.

Honestly, it was pretty amazing. You never realise how much noise combustion engines make until you've seen a huge fraction of them taken off the road like that. It was very pleasant.

[1]: http://xemayvinfast.vn/xe/vinfast-klara/

Post reply on HN