411–420 of 500 posts
Social mobility Equality of opportunity Labour arbitrage
I suppose the first two are worth pursuing vigorously. The last is core to capitalism, and some other complex systems, like cells. But it can be abused and thr former two are indicators of whether society is healthy.
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Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)
Very true in India too. You stick out as backpacker very clearly, the prices are set accordingly. I found it extremely hard to haggle with my european mentality, and ended up agreeing on still too high prices. It took some time to get better. Then you come back to western world (or anywhere else for that matter) after 6 months of such training and you find out you haggle harder than any locals, sometimes to the point…
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Philippines as well. If you don't speak the language you are paying a premium for food, travel, communications, and potentially rent.
My experience in SEA in general and Bali specifically (as a Malaysian), prices are not simply a matter of speaking the language. Vendors often charge based literally on your social class/status.
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In Thailand I can say this isn't the case
They have different prices for foreigner and locals in Thailand and Indonesia.
Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3…
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.
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…
As a coffee enthusiast I wonder what the definition of "really high quality" is here. For me the coffee bean needs to be well roasted (most/all big brands roast too hot to save time and burn the bean. Starbucks too, they cover it with milk and lots of sugar), freshly grinded before brewing and made with a portafilter. No full automatic coffee machine I used produced high quality coffee, at best acceptable coffee, usu…
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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.
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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...
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Income well above average, but that's a flow, not a stock. She probably didn't consider herself wealthy because she didn't have a lot of wealth, like wealthy people have. Wealth, especially pre-World Wars, in the UK as elsewhere in Europe meant owning land and collecting rents. You didn't get wealthy by having a high income. You had a high income because you were wealthy.
The £200 of passive income presumably came from a stock of wealth. And the passive income by itself was still 6 times the salary of the live-in maid. The stock of wealth should therefore have been valued similarly to six healthy female slaves. (Give or take some adjustments, but broadly similar.)
Given we're talking about Agatha Christie here, I imagine the £200 of passive income came from book sales.
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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.
This is strictly personal, but where I grew up with mostly light skinned people... showing up after winter holidays with a dark tan made you look so hot and so rich! Did anyone else feel the same? It carries into my life as an adult. :)