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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

#441

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

In low population density areas you can generally walk around freely in nature, and the denser population get, the more restricted things are.

This is not because Norwegians are civic minded altruists and Singaporeans selfish jerks. It mostly reflects what is practical.

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

#442

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

My interpretation has always been that an expat is abroad temporarily, while an immigrant intends to stay permanently.

I came to the US as an expat, but became an immigrant.

If you tend to see racism behind every raised eyebrow, you can of course also see this terminology as racist.

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

#443

Post by maximus-decimus »

jacknews wrote: post #280
maximus-decimus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much she paid for an RTX 3090. I find it funny how people compare an RTX 3090 to a top of the line gpu from 10 years ago and act as if they should be the same price just because they're both the best. You just can't compare prices between decades when the things being compared improved many folds.

The hedonic inflation argument is that you are now many times better off with your RTX3080 compared to a GTX 480 or whatever, and so your 'cost of living' has effectively gone down, because to buy a GTX 480 equivalent now is many times cheaper than it was. The reality of course is that you have the 'latest greatest' graphic card in each case, and that is what should be measured. It's just not realistic to live like C…

You could totally live your entire life playing only games with late 2000's graphics. Barely anyone "needs" even a discrete gpu even.

If the greatest car in 1900 was a Ford T and the greatest car now is a $1,000,000 Rolls Royce, it doesn't mean it makes sense to compare their price. One is a utility and the other one is the top of the top luxury. It doesn't mean cars got more expensive, it just means there's a new bigger luxury market for that type of object.

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

#444

Post by Grustaf »

literallycancer wrote: post #439
Grustaf wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage. I don't know if this is meant to be serious, but you could just park your car outdoors, like city dwellers do?

There's not enough space for everyone to do this. It's also often not free, you have to pay the city for using up the street space etc. New housing in Europe is planned with underground garage space exactly for this reason. SEA cities are even more densely populated.

But aren't we talking about single family houses here, with a garden? If you have room for a garage in your garden, surely you have room for a car without a garage?

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

#445

Post by throwawaygh »

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…

> maybe even more

Average new car sale price at the end of 2021: $47,077

Average monthly household income at the end of 2021: $5,307

Even highly paid FAANG engineers are probably spending a few months income on a new car.

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

#446

Post by bothandeach »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #16

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…

Hey, I'm with you. In Vancouver, BC, Canada

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

#447

Post by RLN »

NoPie wrote: post #208
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 "£…

Indeed, this seemed to indicate that the rent has increased disproportionately. The article mentions that the rent would cost $500 in today's dollars. That's very cheap for 4 bedroom apartment everywhere in western world, especially in London. Maybe that car was really rubbish by today's standards and technology-wise therefore it is expected that now the real costs have come down. But with apartments I don't think th…

It looks like the flat she referred to still exists, Addison Park Mansions in Hammersmith. So we can make quite good comparison presuming one is rented out still. Though I wouldn't be suprised if they've been parted out into smaller flats, or rented as shared.

Funnily enough I'm sat in my flat about 10 minutes walk away. My building appears to have been built sometime in the late 1800s, and is somewhat falling apart. So the value for money might be even less now.

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

#448

Post by throwaway2037 »

CSMastermind wrote: post #385
bradknowles wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals in Belgium charge you by your income level. We know this because my wife had to be briefly hospitalized in Brussels during the nearly 8 years we lived there, and the hospital made it very clear to us that we were being charged in this way. Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with…

> Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with insurance. I'm curious about this one. I've been to the hospital one time in my adult life. Stayed overnight, got multiple tests including an Xray and an MRI. Got medication, etc. Having heard the horror stories I was ready for a big bill. It was…

I am confused by this seriously down-voted post. Are you based in the US visiting a local hospital saying that you received (very!) fair pricing for an MRI and X-ray? If not, can you please explain?

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

#449

Post by rndgermandude »

CSMastermind wrote: post #385
bradknowles wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals in Belgium charge you by your income level. We know this because my wife had to be briefly hospitalized in Brussels during the nearly 8 years we lived there, and the hospital made it very clear to us that we were being charged in this way. Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with…

> Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with insurance. I'm curious about this one. I've been to the hospital one time in my adult life. Stayed overnight, got multiple tests including an Xray and an MRI. Got medication, etc. Having heard the horror stories I was ready for a big bill. It was…

Google search tells me that in 2020 the median deductible (out of pocket pay before health insurance takes over costs) was between $1,418 and $2,295 depending largely on the company size, with "platinum" plans median of only $95 and "bronze" plans median of $6,992[1].

The cost of an MRI (starting at $400, going way up depending on what was MRI'ed)[2], xray (starting at $100)[3] and an overnight stay (around $2600 non-ICU [4]) would be at least $3100 alone if you had to pay everything out of pocket, not accounting for any additional costs (the unspecified "additional tests" you mentioned, for example, or things you haven't explicitly mentioned but may still used like an ambulance ride, etc).

Of course, this is recent prices, and the prices may have varied when you actually were in hospital, and it is my understanding that prices both for health care services and procedures, and health insurance can vary widely depending on the region and the providers involved in the US.

But my google-fu let's me conclude that you indeed extremely likely had a health insurance plan at "platinum" level, far better than what most of your fellow citizens in the US enjoy.

Somebody with a plan near the "median deductible" would have paid that median deductible of more than $1400 in full, or around 10x what you had to pay, somebody unlucky enough to be on a "bronze" plan might have had to pay the full amount (or at least around 7 grand), and there are about 31 million people in the US without health insurance[5] who would have had to pay in full.

(Please note that I, as somebody who never experienced the US health care system, can thus only provide an outside view based on what I heard from people I know and in the media, and googled)

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-does-health-insurance-...

[2] https://www.itnonline.com/content/mri-costs

[3] https://health.costhelper.com/x-rays.html

[4] https://www.debt.org/medical/hospital-surgery-costs/

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200955/americans-without...

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

#450

Post by fvdessen »

CSMastermind wrote: post #382
fvdessen wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I've been all over the US and lived in two of the cities you mentioned. Dated and been friends with many different hispanic people and I've never seen this happen. That's true of my friends and romantic partners of all races by the way. I can't think of a single time I've seen someone be given a racial discount here. There were a few times at restaurants and grocery stores where they had access to items I wouldn't ha…

Well we found it all the more surprising because our hispanic looking friend didn't even speak Spanish. But that's what happened. Maybe they mistook him for an illegal migrant ? In a similar vein, We also noticed that when our white looking friend was not with us, people started to offer us drugs in the streets, which we found hilarious.
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