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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

#331

Post by contravariant »

pajko wrote: post #318
contravariant wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah is that what it was. Mixing ltr and rtl text always trips me up. To make matters even weirder it seems that sequences of nummerals, such as ١٠ are ltr again. That has some very unintuitive consequences when you try to edit that sentence.

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

#332

Post by selimthegrim »

asdff wrote: post #138
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck 330 USD is also probably on the higher end. In India (which is considered the "expensive" country in South Asia) it is pretty easy to find full time household help for $200/mo even in large, expensive cities. Stuff like iPhones and imported cars, however, cost double their price in the states.

Seems there is a huge business opportunity just mailing things like Apple products from Oregon, where you don't pay sales tax, straight to india to be sold far below their market rates for that same product.

You know, India and Pakistan do have excise/tariffs beyond a personal exemption

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

#333

Post by hnlmorg »

tagoregrtst wrote: post #304
hnlmorg wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :(

No need to racially charge it - sexually exploiting servants is a universal. Curiously, you said “rich white people” forgoing the one prejudice that actually does predict sexual exploitation - men!

> No need to racially charge it - sexually exploiting servants is a universal.

The topic of race was already raised in the grandparent post, I quote (emphasis mine):

> I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to:

While I'm sure exploitation happens in most cultures I'm mostly familiar with it happening in white culture and given that context was already specified and my education being based on that context I decided to keep my reply specific to that context which I already knew.

Sorry if I offended anyone -- I just figured being a white male myself it was more offensive to drag other cultures into the discussion when they were previously outside the scope.

> Curiously, you said “rich white people” forgoing the one prejudice that actually does predict sexual exploitation - men!

I didn't need to specify men because that context was already defined in the post I was responding to. To quote the GP again:

> This was OK if you where a man, a couple or a family. If you where a young woman... good luck with this.

Frankly though, moaning about other cultures doing it too feels a little like trying to pull others down so we don't look so bad instead of acknowledging our own failings. Maybe that's an uncomfortable opinion for people to hear but as the saying goes "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".

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

#334

Post by mattlondon »

dmurray wrote: post #195
mattlondon wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower demand perhaps - e.g. the maid is living with you so they don't need their own place to live.

It's a four-bedroom apartment for one childless couple, so this particular case doesn't support the idea that there was less demand. And the population of London is within 20% of what it was.

I don't follow your point.

The less demand is that the maid lives in the place they work, so do not need their own property to live in. The article seemed to suggest that having live-in staff was common compared to car ownership etc, so I would imagine there were a lot of adults living in their places of work, thus not needing to rent their own apartments etc so reducing demand.

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

#335

Post by selimthegrim »

jakear wrote: post #100
drivers99 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a dumb question: How could it be universal. I’m assuming the maid doesn’t have a maid, right?

Based on what I've heard from people of the area, the maid is usually an immigrant. And "universal" tends to mean "universal amongst proper citizens". Relatedly, I was surprised to learn that some women who "universally" wear a hijab before men feel no need to do so before a male immigrant.

Even if the immigrant is Muslim?

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

#336

Post by buescher »

asdff wrote: post #142
buescher wrote: post #32

Television's "The Brady Bunch" depicted an upper-middle-class household with a live-in maid and a nice house in an LA suburb that did not otherwise live extravagantly by the standards of a decade or two later, when basically no one in the US except maybe the out-of-sight-rich had live-in help any more.

They were using very fast and loose definitions of both economics and physics on that show. That house only has 3 bedrooms in reality and no basement, pretty typical for LA home specs unless you are looking at the old money neighborhoods like Hancock Park where some of the homes look a lot more like the rich people's homes out east (albeit on much smaller lots).

Yeah, television, so a big grain of salt. The point is they were depicted as having a live-in maid, which was going away in the US at the time but still not nearly as remarkable in 1969 as it would be by 1980 or 1990. Or today.

The house was depicted as nice and up-to-date but not extravagant - the kids shared rooms, right? I was implying that another thing that's changed is that that house would cost a much larger multiple of income today than in 1969.

Otherwise they weren't depicted as living as extravagantly as a lot of comfortable people do today. No luxury cars, fancy vacations, etc. Marcia and Greg weren't flying to Africa or the Caribbean to do charity work for their college applications like plainly middle-class kids will do today. Mrs. Brady doesn't chew Alice out for buying tomatoes from Safeway instead of organic heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods. All that would have been absurd in 1969.

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

#337

Post by emptyfile »

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.

100% agree with you, and I don't want anything resembling confrontation when I'm buying souvenirs on vacation.

Couldn't care less if its rude or polite or whatever.

Go ahead and haggle if its fun for you.

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

#338

Post by malwarebytess »

dahfizz wrote: post #316
koolba wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Builds relationships, can arrive at an optimal price, involves human contact.

It doesn't take that long either. There are positives even to things you deem useless.

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

#339

Post by evrydayhustling »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #94
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 "£…

That still doesn't seem like an "easy" comparison. Rents tend to be tied to the infrastructure/facilities and earnings potential within a given radius of the property. 1919 London was dirty with terrible air quality (far worse than Beijing or Mumbai today, literally choked my great grandmother to death on a bad day) and with nowhere near the infrastructure or work opportunities it has today. A fairer comparison to 19…

If we afford this nuance to a rising rent -- that its value depends on surrounding infrastructure -- why do economists treat rising wages as a "disease"? It seems to me that the average violinist has become more productive, because their audience will apply their improved well being to greater economic benefit than 100 years ago. They are providing a desired input to an improved infrastructure, just as an old apartment in a hot neighborhood.

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

#340

Post by Kye »

igorkraw wrote: post #221
fxtentacle wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"private property is subordinate to the common good" is even in our "Constitution" (grundgesetz, literally foundational law), although it has been neutered by precedent and other laws. The right of way is a concept which is still strong in a bunch of countries, including England and famously Norway where "Allemansretten" allows "all men" the right to camp in public spaces. I personally find these habitual rights an i…

It's surreal as an American watching a couple of UK photographers on YouTube just stroll through random gates and cross land without any locks or "No Trespassing" signs. Meanwhile, I got a shotgun shoved in my face for walking too close for the comfort of the owner of a house on the other side of a highway's shoulder. I'm pretty sure brandishing is a crime in Georgia, but I was a teen and wasn't about to argue with someone who could end me with a twitch.
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