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Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

notesonliberty.com

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Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#111

Post by devchix »

ubermonkey wrote: post #93
devchix wrote: post #3

Consols schmonsols! The modern prospector such as Mrs. Bennet would want to know how much is that in today's money. Using the Bank of England's trusty inflation calculator and plugging in 1813 (the year Pride and Prejudice was published), Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? Using the annual yield to derive asset, the…

What I've found in looking at historical financial comparisons in the past is that they are inherently unstable / inexact as you get further and further back. Fifty years ago, even, things fall apart a little. At one point in an early Mad Men episode, some reference is made to whether or not Draper is making $40,000 a year. A basic inflation calculator puts this at about $342K today, but the implication in the show (…

Agreed! I originally did the comparison to better understand what wealth stratum Valjean eventually attained, was 600,000 francs crazy money back then? Marius' grandfather sent him 60 pistoles monthly (600 gold francs!) was that an exhorbitant stipend? Must have been, as he eventually found work as a translator for 700 francs a year. He pawned his watch for 45 francs, just a little more than a bunch of asparagus! Hugo went into fascinating details about how much things cost in the chapter called "Marius Poor". By these measures Cosette was rich, but we don't know the percentage of the population in possession of 600,000 francs or more. Valjean carried this sum around as a wad of cash. Before this he had buried it in the woods! And at that time Paris had an Exchange. Amazing!

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#112

Post by angry_octet »

Danieru wrote: post #63
davnicwil wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's extremely interesting to think about - it's all a system and when you think you could just spend more money on whatever was available (building a bigger house, horses, arts, hiring staff) you also have to consider that there would have been much tighter upper limits on all of these. The labour market was extremely illiquid, and smaller, and economies of trade and skills were much more localised than today.…

Isn't a major topic in bride and prejudice how illiquid the property market is? Mr. Darcy has money, but no one will sell him the land. Flip side the selling of land and thus lose of rent was seen as an act of desperation.

Might have your characters mixed up? Darcy has plenty of land, Bingly wants something fitting his standing as a man of means. However, many rich/aristocratic families were prevented from selling their real estate interests, and could only access the derived profits. This naturally reduced the availability of land.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#113

Post by angry_octet »

neaden wrote: post #99
ubermonkey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've found in looking at historical financial comparisons in the past is that they are inherently unstable / inexact as you get further and further back. Fifty years ago, even, things fall apart a little. At one point in an early Mad Men episode, some reference is made to whether or not Draper is making $40,000 a year. A basic inflation calculator puts this at about $342K today, but the implication in the show (…

Agatha Christie once said that when embarking on her writing career she never thought she would be wealthy enough to afford a car, or too poor to afford servants. Things change quite fast. And I would say that a $2M inheritance is set for life, withdrawing 4% of that should leave you at a steady income of $80,000 a year for doing nothing.

Great quote. Perhaps compare the cost of servants with the cost of having a dishwasher/washer/drycleaner bill, and a car to the cost of a personal jet. Shows how education and engineering and medicine and law have lifted the value unskilled labour to unprecedented levels.

Living off $2M/year is fine, except of course interest rates are now 1% in much of the developed world. Higher returns now requires higher risk.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#114

Post by joshvm »

conjectures wrote: post #97
joshvm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a conflation between wealth and standard of living?

If you think this is a conflation, perhaps you could explain how and why they shouldn't be?

Standard of living is a function of wealth, but wealth is not the sole factor. It also includes quality of the environment, crime levels, access to good medical care, education standards, civil rights, house affordability and so on.

Most people nowadays are poorer than Mr Darcy in a monetary sense, but probably have a higher standard of living.

The sibling post makes the point that in the past, being wealthy was a much bigger component of this - if you're rich you can afford a doctor (versus none), you can eat when others go hungry, you can afford to travel at all, you can be educated, etc.

As I understand it, standard of living is objective - you can quantify it fairly well. Quality of life is subjective.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#115

Post by 1123581321 »

adamson wrote: post #13
oh_sigh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into buying a small estate in the midlands about 6 years ago and the price was around £1.5mm and upkeep was something like 500k/yr. I passed.

Why was upkeep that expensive? Would you be maintaining the entire estate as a perfectly manicured garden?

In addition to the points mentioned, upkeep is really continued development that must be performed within historically set constraints. I found this short video about the work at Euston Hall interesting—though Grafton inherited the estate, he came from the music industry in Nashville as a relative outsider with an eye for costs and revenue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hypmo53fWfw

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#116

Post by danans »

roenxi wrote: post #89
danans wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples have an interesting pattern. > How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. One's wealthiness is always relative to others. The items listed here are goods that are broadly available today across wealth bands, and are therefore not markers of wealthiness. > Conversely Darcy would…

> One's wealthiness is always relative to others. That isn't the case, wealth is an absolute measure. Inequality , power and to some degree satisfaction are relative to others, but wealth can be created and destroyed independently. Which is the major argument against socialism, incidentally. If wealthiness were a relative measure, full blown communism would be great for wealth. Which it most certainly is not. Modern…

> That isn't the case, wealth is an absolute measure

That's why I used the adjective "wealthiness", as in "He is wealthy" vs the noun "wealth" as in "His wealth is X".

The adjective is relative, and implies more wealth relative to a population. The noun is not relative.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#117

Post by _archon_ »

adrianN wrote: post #22
roywiggins wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? One big difference being, when he dies, that income reverts to his heirs and their heirs. If he was earning that as a wage, it wouldn't. So it's not directly comparable.

If he was earning that as a wage, he'd be working long hours every day.

Depends on the rate. To quote Steve Martin, "All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work."

You and I could make Mr. Darcy wages on an hour of work a week, providing that we could find someone willing to pay it :-)

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#118

Post by danans »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #84
danans wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples have an interesting pattern. > How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. One's wealthiness is always relative to others. The items listed here are goods that are broadly available today across wealth bands, and are therefore not markers of wealthiness. > Conversely Darcy would…

Slavery would seem to be a pretty straightforward example of such a market? https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery2009.php

Not for the purpose for quantifying the wealth of someone who owns no slaves.

And slavery is a definitionally different situation because a slave has absolutely no leverage to negotiate for their interests, so whatever quantification of a slave's value and consequent slave owner's net worth is not generalizable to relationships between free people except in very extreme situations.

Another way of looking at this is that all else equal, when freed, a former slave's net worth goes up by a constant factor based on their new status and rights.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#119

Post by TMWNN »

orkon wrote: post #74
misja wrote: post #71

Nice article but I don't think this part of the conclusion is correct: 'Wealth, in Piketty’s view, perpetuates itself, and effortlessly earns its return (never mind the work, risk and selection issues involved). By continually paying the interest on its debt, the governments of Austen’s Britain financed the leisurly lifestyles of the rich, just as the “natural” return of the modern-day rich contribute and maintain to…

I think I have read somewhere that inflation in the end of the 17th - first half of 18th century was almost zero or there was even a deflation. I may be wrong. Maybe someone has a good source?

I've read that from the early 1600s to World War I England had net zero inflation.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#120

Post by conjectures »

joshvm wrote: post #114
conjectures wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think this is a conflation, perhaps you could explain how and why they shouldn't be?

Standard of living is a function of wealth, but wealth is not the sole factor. It also includes quality of the environment, crime levels, access to good medical care, education standards, civil rights, house affordability and so on. Most people nowadays are poorer than Mr Darcy in a monetary sense, but probably have a higher standard of living. The sibling post makes the point that in the past, being wealthy was a mu…

What does it mean to be 'poorer in a monetary sense' if it leads to comparisons where person A has better healthcare, transportation, information access etc than person B but B > A?

Your comment focuses on standard of living issues. But your earlier claim was that these are separate from 'monetary wealth'. I think you would need to specify what 'monetary wealth' is separate from 'standard of living' in order to make a convincing argument.

You'll find this hard to do, because any wealth measurement is either a thing, or an instrument that will get you a fraction of the things other people have. Financial wealth is cashed out in stuff. So cross temporal comparisons are going to involve comparing the stuff two people can command. And the stuff they can command is embedded in the technology and society of their respective times.

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