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

fullstackeconomics.com

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

#81

Post by thaumasiotes »

johnchristopher wrote: post #79
joe_the_user wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the housekeeper pay less when s/he buys for her/himself ? Or does the seller asks the same price ? Wouldn't be in the housekeeper's interest to say he/she's buying for someone else, to cash in a bit extra ? Wouldn't it fit the seller ?

The way I understood your parent comment:

- The vendor charges every customer according to the customer's social class. A white guy pays through the nose. A servant-class local pays a modest amount. It doesn't matter who the food is supposed to be for.

- Thus, it is cheaper for the white guy to hire a housekeeper than to buy and prepare his own food. The white guy's food, if he has a housekeeper, will only cost as much as the housekeeper has to pay for food, because the housekeeper is responsible for buying it. And the savings relative to the white-guy price cover the housekeeper's wages.

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

#82

Post by bee_rider »

addaon wrote: post #42
divbzero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Full time tutors would have been an interesting solution to schooling, in the pandemic. Totally and utterly unscalable of course, but still kind of interesting.

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

#83

Post by vba616 »

jacknews wrote: post #60
metacritic12 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is defined based on utility, not a certain level of society. The second would be something like GDP growth, much higher than inflation, and definitionally a zero-sum game. Inflation says that you would rather prefer to live it today's society at say $60,000/year (with smart phones, cars, Internet TV), than yesterday's society at say $50,000/year (with two maids, but none of the technology). Introspecting, I…

'Hedonic' inflation can't really be measured objectively, and is somewhat useless for financial calculations, since people need to live in society. If Christie enjoyed an 'upper-middle-class' lifestyle on an official inflation-adjusted $50k salary, then it's clear that the offical inflation figures do not actually measure the 'cost of living', but something much more diffuse and subjective like the 'quality of living…

There's a direct relationship between other people making similar wages to you, and your inability to get someone to do a good job on anything at a price you can afford.

If the cost of living hadn't "increased", then the middle class would still be tiny, and we wouldn't be in it. The whole thing would be moot.

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

#84

Post by thaumasiotes »

barrkel wrote: post #80
notfbi wrote: post #51

" The couple’s annual income was around around £700 ($50,000 in today’s dollars)—£500 ($36,000) from his salary and another £200 ($14,000) in passive income. They rented a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in London with four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.” The rent was £90 for a year ($530 per month in today’s dollars). To keep it tidy, they hired a live-in maid for £36 ($2,600) per year, wh…

Income well above average, but that's a flow, not a stock. She probably didn't consider herself wealthy because she didn't have a lot of wealth, like wealthy people have. Wealth, especially pre-World Wars, in the UK as elsewhere in Europe meant owning land and collecting rents. You didn't get wealthy by having a high income. You had a high income because you were wealthy.

The £200 of passive income presumably came from a stock of wealth. And the passive income by itself was still 6 times the salary of the live-in maid. The stock of wealth should therefore have been valued similarly to six healthy female slaves. (Give or take some adjustments, but broadly similar.)

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

#85

Post by notfbi »

barrkel wrote: post #80
notfbi wrote: post #51

" The couple’s annual income was around around £700 ($50,000 in today’s dollars)—£500 ($36,000) from his salary and another £200 ($14,000) in passive income. They rented a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in London with four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.” The rent was £90 for a year ($530 per month in today’s dollars). To keep it tidy, they hired a live-in maid for £36 ($2,600) per year, wh…

Income well above average, but that's a flow, not a stock. She probably didn't consider herself wealthy because she didn't have a lot of wealth, like wealthy people have. Wealth, especially pre-World Wars, in the UK as elsewhere in Europe meant owning land and collecting rents. You didn't get wealthy by having a high income. You had a high income because you were wealthy.

ok, but it even says they had a passive income (aka wealth) leading to 1/3 of that 25x maid's earnings.

Many factual points in the introduction, with the modest apartment, income in today's value, and her own regard of wealth frame it as if she's relatable middle-class.

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

#86

Post by Scoundreller »

em-bee wrote: post #75
fnord77 wrote: post #2

that chart shows the price of TVs as basically approaching free over time, but that doesn't include cable or internet, which in earlier times were not necessary to have a functioning TV

just the other day i was walking through an appliances market and was astonished how you could get huge TVs for less than what i spent on my phone. of course they probably all come with some sort of advertising that you can't turn off, but still...

Take a look at the used market. 50” 1080P dumb TVs go for $50. Nobody wants the ones without the advertising/built-in apps.

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

#87

Post by drivers99 »

kingcharles wrote: post #40
pcurve wrote: post #25

Live in maid is fairly common in other countries still including Hong Kong where you can hire one for less than $1k / month with allowance, other expenses included. It's not just for the riches. Many dual income families have them even if they're little above middle class.

My girlfriend is Qatari and it is almost universal there to have a live-in maid.

Maybe a dumb question: How could it be universal. I’m assuming the maid doesn’t have a maid, right?

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

#88

Post by n8ta »

kingcharles wrote: post #40
pcurve wrote: post #25

Live in maid is fairly common in other countries still including Hong Kong where you can hire one for less than $1k / month with allowance, other expenses included. It's not just for the riches. Many dual income families have them even if they're little above middle class.

My girlfriend is Qatari and it is almost universal there to have a live-in maid.

Or be a live-in maid. It seems unlikely more than half the people have a live-n maid.

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

#89

Post by notfbi »

kube-system wrote: post #78
notfbi wrote: post #51

" The couple’s annual income was around around £700 ($50,000 in today’s dollars)—£500 ($36,000) from his salary and another £200 ($14,000) in passive income. They rented a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in London with four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.” The rent was £90 for a year ($530 per month in today’s dollars). To keep it tidy, they hired a live-in maid for £36 ($2,600) per year, wh…

That's because being a maid wasn't even seen as an equal to the idea of a "working class job" as we see it now. Someone who had to support a family at that time would have been presumed to have an income from a man's job. Someone working as a maid was presumed to not have their own household to support and had their housing provided.

I think this is a fair point. Also a live in maid is not comparable because it probably includes full room/board.

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

#90

Post by maximus-decimus »

jandrese wrote: post #70
jacknews wrote: post #49

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.

It is hard to compare because Agatha Christie didn't have an internet bill to pay, but also didn't have access to a huge chunk of the world's knowledge at her fingertips. This goes for a lot of things. Her healthcare would have been much less expensive than modern care, even adjusting for inflation, but she would also be more likely to die of disease or injury.

I wonder how much she paid for an RTX 3090.

I find it funny how people compare an RTX 3090 to a top of the line gpu from 10 years ago and act as if they should be the same price just because they're both the best. You just can't compare prices between decades when the things being compared improved many folds.

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