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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

#281

Post by __alexs »

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?

Because they are sex workers.

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

#282

Post by mFixman »

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…

> housing prices are driven by the average income

They are driven by the average income of the wealthiest $number_of_homes renters. If there are not enough homes in a single city then a lot of people will pay very significant part of their salary to have a place to live.

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

#283

Post by fvdessen »

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.

When I was in the USA a few years ago with an hispanic looking friend, he was often offered a steep discount at the various shops and restaurants. Often enough that we would ask him to do all the shopping.

This happened to us in multiple cities (NY/Miami/SF)

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

#284

Post by 323 »

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?

Not all of them are free, some of them are kidnapped by traffickers from the country side.

https://www.economist.com/baobab/2012/04/24/maid-in-ethiopia

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

#285

Post by SergeAx »

jerrre wrote: post #268
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?

Studio recording is a different type of labor, to produce a one hour record musicians should put at least 6-8 working hours. This is for quartet, bigger orchestras will tend to take even longer to properly record. We also need to factor in a work of recording and acoustic engineers, equipment and sound stage cost.

But to be precise, one full take of one hour recording will still take exactly the same amount of labor from musicians)

The whole idea of record distribution is actually a different type of economy. Live broadcast would be an interesting twist in this path of reason, but it was not a thing in 1960s.

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

#286

Post by fxtentacle »

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?

At least in Japan, some maid services are more like cosplaying escorts.

https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/100650

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/11/10/national/u-n-of...

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

#287

Post by koolba »

emptyfile wrote: post #204
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.

In countries like that I just don't buy anything. Life is too short for haggling.

Haggling is fun. I’m convinced the modern aversion to haggling in first world countries is because people grow up avoiding all direct confrontation. They think it’s somehow how rude to disagree with someone about the price of the article at hand. The next level of it is when they justify this “politeness” by claiming that haggling is inefficient or a waste of time.

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

#288

Post by avgcorrection »

Things that were luxuries in the past could at the same time be necessities today. That’s not counter-intuitive.

Maybe you need to have a cell phone for work. Clearly that was optional in the year 1900.

> They rented a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in London with four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.”

Did people who lived in London back then require a car? Maybe some people would prefer to be able to rent a place in London without owning a car rather then to commute to London for work with a car.

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

#290

Post by rsynnott »

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…

Most things were cheaper for the (then rather small) upper-middle-class, yes. For others, not so much. A lot more people had to choose between starving and freezing in 1919 London than in 2021 London.
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