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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

#241

Post by BlueTemplar »

e4e78a06 wrote: post #23
mherdeg wrote: post #3

I stopped reading this about four paragraphs in and did a bunch of web searches to try to find the phenomenon it reminded me of. Once I had successfully found it with my second search ([economics name for effect raises orchestra]) I came back and found Baumol in the very next subhead. Whoops. All a great read though! In retrospect every year at the student newspaper when we ran the "here is how much tuition is going…

The price of college in particular is commented on in the article - prestige matters and prestige is zero sum, so supply is constrained and demand is highly inelastic. Add on to that vastly increased purchasing power made possible by subsidized student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy and you have a recipe for out of control prices. Limited supply of a highly inelastic good combined with massive demand wa…

You will notice that this is not an issue everywhere (or at least not as dramatically so as in the USA).

I guess a bit like housing prices have disproportionately risen in London compared to other places since Agatha Christie's time ?

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

#242

Post by shadowofneptune »

roel_v wrote: post #220
shadowofneptune wrote: post #175

The rent seems insanely low, it's hard to find a single-room apartment for that price in a medium-size city. By 1919 you have most of the utilities we expect to have in an apartment, so that doesnt seem to be a factor. Is there some factor not mentioned in the article, or have rents just gone up more than other things?

Do you mean water, electricity etc? Because in 1919 those were not universal (not sure about how 'common' they were in London, but in much of Western Europe they weren't even that), and heating would have been done through coal too, I presume. No double glazing or any other insulation really, wooden stairs and wooden beams between floors, no hot water taps, ... 'Living' (as in, living in a house) back then was vastly…

Ok, that does help. Yes, I had been thinking of London as having the best available at the time, the most up-do-date. I didn't consider the impact building codes have.

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

#244

Post by AussieWog93 »

Interesting that he brings up "a robot to automatically brew Starbucks-caliber coffee".

Here in Australia, you can get a really high-quality coffee from just about any petrol station for $1 (in AUD; around 70c in USD). Yet in spite of this, we have a thriving cafe scene where people will gladly pay $4-$5 for a take-away latte.

What's equally "irrational" is that Starbucks, despite the high amount of effort put into each drink, is generally considered to be worse than the $1 coffee from 7-11 or Coles Express.

I'm not 100% sure what the takeaway point is, but it was just so jarring to read that Americans view Starbucks as a luxury rather than some kind of bizarro-world meme.

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

#245

Post by darkwater »

fxtentacle wrote: post #207
stavros wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, otherwise they're called immigrants.

Or "backpackers" - which seems to be secret code for: stay away, these people (usually guys) cause more trouble than they are worth.

No, backpackers in SE Asia are still mostly on the expat side. Even if they are broken students on a sabbatical year, they mostly have families home that can back them up in case of need. (Exceptions apply, YMMV etc etc.)

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

#246

Post by walrus01 »

mcorning wrote: post #160
telesilla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people expect him to do this. Right, it's part of how society works. In some places, having a housekeeper is a critical part of the economy and its incredibly impolite not to have one, if you are part of the expat class.

I'm surprised to hear that it is impolite to not have a housekeeper if you are an expat. To which places are you referring?

I can't speak to the social expectations to have a housekeeper or cook as a domestic employee, but in many developing nation environments with high income disparities between the working class and those who hire domestic staff, there's another thing to consider.

In some places that don't have supermarkets the process of buying groceries for a whole family is much more time consuming and labor intensive. For example, you get vegetables from one market, you go to another place if you want chicken and wait while they literally kill it in front of you, chop it up and put it in a plastic bag.

Everything comes from its own decentralized market and requires a lot more time/effort to buy on an ongoing basis.

Shopping and the process of buying all the supplies for a household is not nearly as convenient as going to Costco or similar in north america.

Often the role of cook is combined with general duties of procuring household supplies, handling things like the local electrical bill, hiring laborers for household repair and maintenance, etc.

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

#247

Post by BlueTemplar »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #90
jandrese wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, we're also in a period where at least some mid/high range cards from a few years ago cost 4-5 times more than they did on release...

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

#248

Post by Jaruzel »

jmnicolas wrote: post #243

TIL that Starbucks is a luxury experience (I'm not a coffee drinker and there's no Starbucks in my town). I thought it was the McDonald's of coffee, I mean if it's luxury why are they using Styrofoam cups instead of glass?!

If you are in city with lots of 'premium' coffee shops, Starbucks is generally considered the worst of the 'premium' brands. However, every other shop in large city is a Starbucks, so for many convenience of locale wins over.

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

#249

Post by lodovic »

wbobeirne wrote: post #136
danans wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 qualit…

I get what you're going for, but this simply isn't comparable. I pretty much can't walk into the same store and purchase the same item but be quoted a different price than anyone else. There are rich areas and poor areas, touristy areas and off-the-beaten-path areas. But in US retail you won't find sellers discriminate based solely on the look of the customer in 99% of cases.

Depends on the goods; in normal retail, surely, but if you walk into a used car store, a pawn shop, or try to get insurance, YMMV.

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

#250

Post by ricardobayes »

My boss in London could afford a live-in nanny from the Philippines. From what I know she was paid 500 pounds as 'pocket money' plus all expenses covered (food+lodging). So maids are definitely still a thing in the 21st century among certain upper middle-class families.
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