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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

#261

Post by Cthulhu_ »

radu_floricica wrote: post #228
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'm in a moderately ok country, and I still see buying a new car as a luxury. It's something you do much later in life/career, when you can't be bother to take care of the extra management a used car comes with. And definitely not for everybody - there's quite a few people I know that are middle age with kids and don't even think about a new car. They just have chose other tradeoffs

I mean, given the depreciation on most new cars, it doesn't make sense to buy a new car in a lot of cases. But it depends on various factors like how much do you drive, does your employer compensate you for driving, how much maintenance does a used vs a new car need, etc.

Note that this is a very eurocentric viewpoint coming from someone who only has a car for shopping and family visits.

In my previous job I had a lease car from my employer, that made a bit more sense then given how much I had to drive.

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

#262

Post by johannes1234321 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #205
mcorning wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

50 years ago, Germany also still had a popular saying "Eigentum verpflichtet" which I would translate as "ownership creates a duty". In short, people who owned companies, large plots of land, or other infrastructure were expected to spread their wealth by creating jobs. Nowadays, the spirit still lives on somewhat in the fact that we have free public scenic hiking trails through what looks like very expensive private…

> 50 years ago, Germany also still had a popular saying "Eigentum verpflichtet"

This isn't just a saying, but a part of the constitution (Article 14, http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.ht... )

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

#263

Post by agent008t »

NoPie wrote: post #208
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 "£…

Indeed, this seemed to indicate that the rent has increased disproportionately. The article mentions that the rent would cost $500 in today's dollars. That's very cheap for 4 bedroom apartment everywhere in western world, especially in London. Maybe that car was really rubbish by today's standards and technology-wise therefore it is expected that now the real costs have come down. But with apartments I don't think th…

What's more interesting, is that somehow very few new nice areas (towns, cities) have been built. Take almost any area in London with anything built after the 1950s, and in many cases the new buildings make the area far worse, not better. Kensington is still the size it was, and there are hardly any new Kensingtons available - and a lot less affordable for an average professional.

London is wealthy enough for there to be no 'bad areas'.

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

#264

Post by SergeAx »

"Back in the 1960s, the economist William Baumol observed that it took exactly as much labor to play a string quartet in 1965 as it did in 1865—in economics jargon, violinists hadn’t gotten any more productive. Yet the wages of a professional violinist in 1965 were a lot higher than in 1865."

This is actually brilliant and deep. We may argue a lot that music education became more expensive, violins themselves cost more, musicians should pay their rent, which is also increased century over century, but the fact stands still: it took exactly as much labor.

Talking about the rent: housing prices are driven by the average income (because the balanced market will extract maximum wealth from its participants). So the Baumol's cost disease can be one of the key inflation factors.

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

#265

Post by christophilus »

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?!

McDonalds coffee is better. Dunkin’ and Chick-fil-A are better. (None of those is great, mind you; just better than Starbucks.) Starbucks is utter swill. Their coffee is always burnt, and if you’ve had anything citrus-like beforehand, their coffee tastes moldy. I have never had a good coffee there, and have never understood the appeal.

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

#266

Post by Aeolun »

fxtentacle wrote: post #213
fastball wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: your skin color.

No, your manners. Plus little details like a nice watch, clean shirt, how you arrive, perfume, hair style, etc. It's basically the same as if you go to a trade show in the US. All the salespeople are trying to figure out which visitors are CEOs and, hence, worth their time, and which ones are just curious amateurs. Maybe Google "Thuan Pham" - the Vietnamese Uber ex-CTO. He's doing it so well that even for us westerne…

He doesn’t seem particularly mind bogglingly rich to me? Maybe his behavior?

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

#267

Post by have_faith »

elcritch wrote: post #105
mattwad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Egypt, that's true unless you haggle. You can always haggle to get close to Egyptian prices, but if I didn't have my friend with me to show me how to do that, I would have paid American prices the whole trip. I'm sure a lot of places work similarly. At the end of the day, they want to make a sale, doesn't matter who you are just what they think you'll pay.

Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)

Is there any difference in the expectations of haggling if it is a man or woman doing it (on the tourist side)? just curious.

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

#268

Post by jerrre »

SergeAx wrote: post #264

"Back in the 1960s, the economist William Baumol observed that it took exactly as much labor to play a string quartet in 1965 as it did in 1865—in economics jargon, violinists hadn’t gotten any more productive. Yet the wages of a professional violinist in 1965 were a lot higher than in 1865." This is actually brilliant and deep. We may argue a lot that music education became more expensive, violins themselves cost mo…

Didn't read the full article, but couldn't you argue that with audio recording and distribution 1 hour of string quartet playing labor can yield many more person-hours of string quartet listening in 1965 than 1865?

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

#269

Post by Little_Fish »

grandinj wrote: post #162
mcorning wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's a fairly common attitude in poorer countries - there is an expectation that if you are wealthy, you have (at the very least) an obligation to provide employment.

I think this has a lot of truth. My brother was based in the Philippines for a while for work and was expected to have at least a housekeeper and a chauffeur. I think having a driver was a very reasonable safety measure given the traffic there too. At the time it seemed very ostentatious to us at home, but it was totally the norm.

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

#270

Post by croh »

fxtentacle wrote: post #205
mcorning wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

50 years ago, Germany also still had a popular saying "Eigentum verpflichtet" which I would translate as "ownership creates a duty". In short, people who owned companies, large plots of land, or other infrastructure were expected to spread their wealth by creating jobs. Nowadays, the spirit still lives on somewhat in the fact that we have free public scenic hiking trails through what looks like very expensive private…

I guess this is the reason in Germany it is very common to run your own business when you are employed while countries like India most of companies add very brutal moonlighting clause in job agreement.
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