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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

#91

Post by betwixthewires »

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.

Well, to nitpick, that aspect of the primer was to demonstrate that there are some things, specifically human voices, that were hard to automate. The "tutor" made absolutely no teaching decisions whatsoever was instructed what to say. They only provided a voice. This was a crucial point in the story. So I'd say the educational aspect was entirely automated. Most of the value was provided by the primer itself. If a machine could've provided the voice, all aspects of the relationship with the book would have been directly with it.

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

#92

Post by adrianN »

amscanne wrote: post #65
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…

They didn’t suggest that, it said: > Still, Christie didn’t consider herself wealthy Almost no one considers themselves wealthy. Even people that are very well-off typically consider themselves some variation of middle class, because they can so obviously and clearly see the next rung up the ladder, and how they are not on it. This point is made perfectly by her quote about how only the rich have cars.

The middle class is just very wide. Essentially anybody who doesn't starve when they're out of work for a couple of months is middle class. Upper class is distinguished from middle class whether you have to work at all. Very few people have enough passive income to afford a ~median lifestyle. Agatha Christie might not fit into middle class, but today a lot of people do.

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

#93

Post by gruez »

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...

>of course they probably all come with some sort of advertising that you can't turn off, but still...

refuses to connect to wifi

problem solved.

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

#94

Post by AussieWog93 »

dmz73 wrote: post #61

Interesting that he compares everything that is hard to compare but ignores one thing that would be very easy - rental pricing. You had to pay it then and you have to pay it now. "four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.” The rent was £90 for a year." According to one CPI calculator ( https://www.in2013dollars.com ) "£90 in 1919 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £4,951.54 today" and "£…

That still doesn't seem like an "easy" comparison.

Rents tend to be tied to the infrastructure/facilities and earnings potential within a given radius of the property.

1919 London was dirty with terrible air quality (far worse than Beijing or Mumbai today, literally choked my great grandmother to death on a bad day) and with nowhere near the infrastructure or work opportunities it has today.

A fairer comparison to 1919 London would be a hypothetical working class town where the primary employers are steel mills and environmental standards are simply unenforced.

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

#95

Post by dustintrex »

> “The full treatment, including surgery and chemotherapy, can reach between $8,000 and $10,000 for a dog or cat.”

Meanwhile, full cancer treatment for a human can easily cost 100x that, because care for pets is a free market and care for humans is very far from it.

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

#96

Post by danans »

joe_the_user wrote: post #41
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.

> But he found that, since the merchants charged people by their social class,

The same thing happens in developed countries like the US too. It's just done a different way: We have high end grocery stores and low end grocery stores, and ones in the middle, each catering more or less to different social classes.

If you are really low on the totem pole, you may have no grocery store.

Although they differ in the quality of food they offer, there is significant overlap also, which is priced differently.

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

#97

Post by riffraff »

I remember reading Hobsbawn's The Age of Extremes, where he mentioned his realization that the world really had changed as a communist unionist told him after a visit to some factory in northern England "would you believe it, Comrades there have cars!"

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

#98

Post by SilasX »

School-Cotton wrote: post #68

Quip from a friend from a (relatively) poor country: “Before I moved to the US, it would have seemed bizarre to me that someone could be rich enough to afford a car but not be able to afford a driver”.

Reminds me of another discussion where some of us were confused about someone retrofitting child seats in a Ferrari: how would you be rich enough to afford a Ferrari as a toy/show-off car, but not also have a normal, functional car for when you need to drive the child around (or a chauffer)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24762683

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

#99

Post by dustintrex »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #64
tomrod wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philippines as well. If you don't speak the language you are paying a premium for food, travel, communications, and potentially rent.

In Thailand I can say this isn't the case

Many attractions in Thailand have dual pricing, with foreigner pricing in Arabic numerals (100 baht) and local pricing in Thai numerals (๒๐ บาท). The price differential is often 5x or more.

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

#100

Post by jakear »

drivers99 wrote: post #87
kingcharles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Based on what I've heard from people of the area, the maid is usually an immigrant. And "universal" tends to mean "universal amongst proper citizens".

Relatedly, I was surprised to learn that some women who "universally" wear a hijab before men feel no need to do so before a male immigrant.

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