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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

#371

Post by howLongHowLong »

nyokodo wrote: post #145
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…

> If you are really low on the totem pole, you may have no grocery store. The lowest would be the dollar stores, but then you have food stamps, and food banks which are like free supermarkets in a sense. If you can’t get to them then there’s soup kitchens and quite a few charities that will bring food to you. We can definitely fill in more cracks but there are a lot of available food sources in America.

I'm assuming you've never tried to maintain a nutritious diet through dollar stores and food banks before. It's very difficult. Additionally, when you take into account special packaging made for dollar stores, some of the trash food is actually more expensive than healthy items available at the "rich" store.

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

#372

Post by lotsofpulp »

Loughla wrote: post #357
Blahah wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true currently in Kenya, if you integrate at all. People don't usually live in isolation, they are part of a local community and it's natural and expected that they share opportunities and risks with their community. If you can afford to, you are expected to hire other people to do things that save you time and energy, distributing your wealth in the local economy. Having a housekeeper, one or more people respon…

That's genuinely interesting. Here in my part of the states, you're expected to do it all yourself, and in my area (exceedingly rural and exceedingly low income) having anyone do some of those things would be seen as being stuck-up or snobbish or something to that effect. For example, I still catch grief for being a "rich bitch" from my neighbors because I hired someone to put a roof on my covered porch on the back o…

> This may sound naive, but I had legitimately never considered that it's a valid and useful way to spread my opportunities through the community.

Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.

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

#373

Post by jccalhoun »

amscanne wrote: post #65
notfbi wrote: post #51

" The couple’s annual income was around around £700 ($50,000 in today’s dollars)—£500 ($36,000) from his salary and another £200 ($14,000) in passive income. They rented a fourth-floor walk-up apartment in London with four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, and a “nice outlook on green.” The rent was £90 for a year ($530 per month in today’s dollars). To keep it tidy, they hired a live-in maid for £36 ($2,600) per year, wh…

They didn’t suggest that, it said: > Still, Christie didn’t consider herself wealthy Almost no one considers themselves wealthy. Even people that are very well-off typically consider themselves some variation of middle class, because they can so obviously and clearly see the next rung up the ladder, and how they are not on it. This point is made perfectly by her quote about how only the rich have cars.

Reminds me of the Chicago law professor who made $250,000 and didn't think he was rich but he lives in a super nice neighborhood and sends 3 kids to private school https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/todd-henderson-we-are...

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

#374

Post by seanmcdirmid »

stavros wrote: post #172
jiggunjer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But expat doesn't automatically mean wealthy.

It does, otherwise they're called immigrants.

Expats usually don’t have immigrant visas. They also receive packages from their companies for their temporary assignments. If you go to the country on your own to fund a job, you usually won’t be referred to as an expat by those with packages who refer to themselves as expats. But you won’t be referred to as a migrant worker either unless you are poor and doing construction or farm work. We used the term half-pats to describe ourselves, but mostly it was just foreigners.

The USA is exceptional because almost every visa that allows for work is considered an immigration visa (eg H1 leads to a greencard, eventually). But in other countries that is most definitely not true.

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

#375

Post by fastball »

dendriti wrote: post #187
fastball wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: your skin color.

No... please don't put words in my mouth. Social class is somewhat related to color in SEA, but not to that extent.

Social class is very related to skin color, at least in Bali. Balinese cover themselves up extensively to avoid getting any darker, cosmetic products are specifically advertised as having bleaching properties to make you whiter, etc – all because historically darker skin was associated with the lower/lowest caste (peasants) and lighter with the upper.

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

#376

Post by kingcharles »

drivers99 wrote: post #87
kingcharles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend is Qatari and it is almost universal there to have a live-in maid.

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

Sorry, to be clearer, it is universal for Qatari citizens.

"In early 2017, Qatar's total population was 2.6 million: 313,000 Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar

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

#377

Post by kingcharles »

n8ta wrote: post #88
kingcharles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend is Qatari and it is almost universal there to have a live-in maid.

Or be a live-in maid. It seems unlikely more than half the people have a live-n maid.

Sorry, to be clearer, it is universal for Qatari citizens.

"In early 2017, Qatar's total population was 2.6 million: 313,000 Qatari citizens and 2.3 million expatriates."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar

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

#378

Post by CSMastermind »

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)

I hate to break it to you but rich white people are generally far less likely to be a sexual predation risk in these situations because they often have more to lose, have easier access to consenting parties, and come from countries that stigmatize that type of behavior to a much greater degree.

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

#379

Post by tasuki »

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…

They were well off.

Rent was 12% because rents generally were lower, but eg clothing for sure was way more expensive.

You can compare to the maid and see how she was doing.

How long did the maid have to work to be able to buy a shirt, vs how long do you have to work to buy a shirt?

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

#380

Post by throwhauser »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #372
Loughla wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's genuinely interesting. Here in my part of the states, you're expected to do it all yourself, and in my area (exceedingly rural and exceedingly low income) having anyone do some of those things would be seen as being stuck-up or snobbish or something to that effect. For example, I still catch grief for being a "rich bitch" from my neighbors because I hired someone to put a roof on my covered porch on the back o…

> This may sound naive, but I had legitimately never considered that it's a valid and useful way to spread my opportunities through the community. Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.

> Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.

...and then a data scientist with an advanced degree spends the day hand-crafting SQL to root-cause a customer complaint after Bezos sends a one-byte email, "?"...

(EDIT: I may have focused on one aspect of the parent's point at the expense of the other, clarified below).

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