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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

#311

Post by angry_octet »

namdnay wrote: post #180
joe_the_user wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve noticed that in India, it’s cheaper for a foreigner to book an Uber car than hail an auto rickshaw, because the former can’t discriminate

Surely Uber can very much discriminate? Tourist prices for tourists. And Uber definitely knows you're a visitor.

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

#312

Post by alisonatwork »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #244

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 e…

I remember when Starbucks first arrived in Australia there were several articles talking about exactly this topic. Because cheap espresso coffee is ubiquitous in Australia, Starbucks doesn't provide the same value-add that it did in the US where most coffee was weak drip coffee to begin with. I think it took years of careful marketing till Starbucks was able to "train" Australians to pay double for their mixed drinks than what they used to pay for regular espresso coffees. I suspect nowadays people don't really see Starbucks as a coffee, but as its own exclusive flavored hot drink that operates more as a status symbol.

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

#313

Post by goodpoint »

fxtentacle wrote: post #286
mmmmmbop wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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...

Not at all. There are cosplay cafe' where employees cosplay whatever role or character and there are real housekeeping services.

Japanese people can tell the difference between reality and cosplay.

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

#314

Post by anovikov »

Another way to look at it is that maybe it's because of economic development per se? Inflation adjusted incomes look fine but real per capita incomes has grown since 1919 by about 7x. So the social-ranking equivalent of their salary wasn't $50K but about $350K, they were in ~top 5%, and maid's salary "social" equivalent was about on the level of today's minimum wage. It is quite fitting that top 5% of families can afford maids earning a minimum wage.

In particular case of UK, nominal GDP per capita was 119.05 pounds in 1919 so maid was making 36 pounds = 0.3x of it. Now nominal GDP per capita in US is $70K and it's completely OK if the maid makes $21K, that's even well above minimum wage. Surely one can be hired for the amount.

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

#315

Post by goodpoint »

koolba wrote: post #287
emptyfile wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When all sellers and customers haggle it creates a zero-sum game where nothing useful is achieved and everybody is wasting their time.

Fun when you do it once, not so fun when is expected every day.

A similar zero-sum game is advertising. Yet, some cultures look down on haggling and embrace advertising with open arms...

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

#316

Post by dahfizz »

koolba wrote: post #287
emptyfile wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if haggling is fun for you, it is still a big expenditure of time and effort that accomplishes nothing. There's simply no reason for it to exist.

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

#317

Post by Symbiote »

zem wrote: post #196
dustintrex wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

they are very up-front about that, though, and my thai friends told me it's because their taxes support the attractions, which seemed perfectly fair to me.

Last time I was in one of the large, free museums in London (British Museum, Natural History Museum, Science Musem etc), a tourist asked me to read out / read simpler the words shown above the donation box. He then put £30 in.

I was surprised, as I'd never thought to donate to these museums. He pointed out that he didn't pay tax in Britain, and entry tickets to a similar museum at home would be around £30.

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

#318

Post by pajko »

contravariant wrote: post #309
car wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Egypt, it also helps to be able to read the arabic numerals — eastern arabic [0] that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_... Eastern Arabic ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ١٠

For some reason I didn't expect you to list them from right to left.

It's "automatic", see https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup... and https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/

However that algorithm has a couple of flaws in mixed left and right ordered text, and a couple of control characters have been introduced to solve the issue: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-c...

Could play a bit in https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html to see how things work.

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

#319

Post by ejb999 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #278
mmmmmbop wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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. :(

>>But we (rich white people) don't exactly have a good track record in these types of situation

Wow, nice generalization - do you get all your 'facts' from the movies?

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

#320

Post by rjsw »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #244

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 e…

There are petrol station machines in France and Italy that make better coffee than Starbucks too.
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