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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

#271

Post by Aeolun »

jseban wrote: post #232
NoPie wrote: post #198

I have a different conclusion. The article mentions that the car would have cost her 3 months of income. That doesn't sound too much and is roughly about the same what people pay for cars today, maybe even more. The reason she thought about the car as a luxury and not a necessity is that then the society wasn't dependent on cars like we do today. They travelled less, worked closer to home, milkman brought milk to hom…

That was my conclusion as well, everything was simply insanely cheap then compared to today. A car today cost much more than 3 months salary, and to rent such an apartment would be basically impossible. The rent was 12% of his income only. Which means a bachelor with a middle class job could easily rent an apartment with 4 bedrooms and 2 sitting rooms. LOL Everything was much much cheaper. Except exotic food grocerie…

> A car today cost much more than 3 months salary

Depending on where you work, not that much more. But you don’t get to spend all of your gross salary on cars.

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

#273

Post by schnitzelstoat »

estaseuropano wrote: post #256
NoPie wrote: post #198

I have a different conclusion. The article mentions that the car would have cost her 3 months of income. That doesn't sound too much and is roughly about the same what people pay for cars today, maybe even more. The reason she thought about the car as a luxury and not a necessity is that then the society wasn't dependent on cars like we do today. They travelled less, worked closer to home, milkman brought milk to hom…

It was also much more unusual to be in long-term debt as that often would have ended in serfdom-like situations. The ease of getting huge loans and credits nowadays is very novel.

The downside to this is that mass homeownership wasn't a thing at all.

There was a huge class divide between the property owners who could accumulate wealth and those renting houses or tenement flats who were unlikely to ever be able to purchase their own property.

Sadly, the insane UK housing market is causing such a divide to return.

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

#274

Post by fxtentacle »

Aeolun wrote: post #266
fxtentacle wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I thought he got $80 mio in Uber shares some years ago. In Ho Chi Minh City - the capital of his home country - you can buy a good freshly cooked lunch like Com Suon Op La (steak with egg, rice and fresh vegetables) for $0.50

So for everyday living, $80mio in Vietnam is going to feel like $8bio in the US (because steak in a restaurant is $50 instead of $0.5 for a 100x multiplier in living costs).

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

#275

Post by fxtentacle »

darkwater wrote: post #245
fxtentacle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I agree with you that most westerners who travel to SE Asia will still be considered as "expats" by the locals.

What I meant to say is that those people who the locals consider not "expat" anymore, but "backpacker" instead, must really have fallen low.

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

#276

Post by lagadu »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #174
adrianN wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen an updated definition that kicks in at the time you can take one or more yearly vacations, so basically just doctors, highly paid laywers, highly paid SWEs, and executives.

That's extremely US-centric. Nearly everyone in Europe gets 20+ paid days a year, including minimum wage workers and it's common to use at least two of those weeks to go somewhere that's not in the region that you live in.

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

#277

Post by parenthesis »

NoPie wrote: post #198

I have a different conclusion. The article mentions that the car would have cost her 3 months of income. That doesn't sound too much and is roughly about the same what people pay for cars today, maybe even more. The reason she thought about the car as a luxury and not a necessity is that then the society wasn't dependent on cars like we do today. They travelled less, worked closer to home, milkman brought milk to hom…

The UK railway network back then was very dense.

In the UK you are never very far away from a road called Station Road with no (longer) any station or railway, or from a path that used to be a railway line. Or a strange bit of road with only the backs of things on it that use to be a railway line.

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

#278

Post by hnlmorg »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #260
miniwark wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to: - rent a house - hire a house guardian - hire at last one maid - hire a chauffeur if you own a car It was also recommended than they come form the local neighborhood. It was a social norm, and if you do not do it you can expect the local policemen to "fine you" every time you take the car, the food cost to be x5 the price (or m…

> (I will avoid the more complicated subject of the maid...) I'm really curious now. Why is the maid a more complicated subject?

Given our history, I was assuming there was some expectation that duties might also include requests of a sexual nature.

I really hope that's not the case. But we (rich white people) don't exactly have a good track record in these types of situation. :(

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

#279

Post by schnitzelstoat »

The near flat graph of housing costs since 1993 [1] seems really suspect.

It's from the BLS so maybe housing costs have been much more stable in the USA, because in the UK they have soared since the early 90's - so much so that Millennials are often called "Generation Rent" due to the declining rate of home ownership.

[1] https://fullstackeconomics.com/content/images/size/w1600/202...

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

#280

Post by jacknews »

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.

The hedonic inflation argument is that you are now many times better off with your RTX3080 compared to a GTX 480 or whatever, and so your 'cost of living' has effectively gone down, because to buy a GTX 480 equivalent now is many times cheaper than it was.

The reality of course is that you have the 'latest greatest' graphic card in each case, and that is what should be measured.

It's just not realistic to live like Christie (no antibiotics, no highways, air travel, internet, tv, etc, etc) in 2022, and so inflation calculations based on like-for-like products and services are essentially meaningless.

'Cost of living' measures should reflect how much it costs to live like a factory worker, a shop assistant, a doctor, lawyer, manager, CEO, etc. Inflation currently measures 'Quality of living' more than 'cost of living', if anything at all.

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