Feb 24th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Relative Prices Blogging
Brad DeLong observes “In Agatha Christie’s autobiography, she mentioned how she never thought she would ever be wealthy enough to own a car – nor so poor that she wouldn’t have servants.”
This kind of thing gets a bit hard to get one’s head around when thinking about the future. What do you think will be the equivalent 100 years from now of Agatha Christie’s car and servants?
61 Responses to “Relative Prices Blogging”
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February 24th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I’ll never be rich enough to become immortal, but never poor enough to have to have to live on one of the raft communities.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
What do you think will be the equivalent 100 years from now of Agatha Christie’s car and servants?
Based on present trends on energy supply and income inequality, I’m guessing “a car” and “servants.”
February 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Isn’t it obvious? Given the declining availability of oil, and an overpopulated world where labor will be cheap, I’d say I’ll never be wealthy enough to own a gas powered car – nor so poor that I won’t have servants.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Gary beat me to it, and pithier as well.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I’ll never be rich enough to go to outer space, nor will I be poor enough that I can’t afford to eat bananas.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I’m thinking slaves are coming back, in a big way.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I won’t be rich enough to vacation on Mars. But I won’t be so poor that I can’t afford a household robot.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Aside from the clever inversion of Christie’s formulation, a lot of these answers are missing the point: the relative price of the goods needs to become inverted. It’s not just enough to name items A and B, where A is already harder to obtain than B, and then say “someday I won’t be able to afford A”.
So here’s my stab at it: I’ll never be rich enough to own a house, nor poor enough to not have a TV wider than I am tall.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I won’t be rich enough to own a varnox. But I won’t be so poor that I can’t afford a glip-thorp.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:21 am
The new economic theory one commenter mentioned, work with scientific fiction research to estimate the future to better estimate the stimulus multipliers.
The answer, in 10 years, will be widespread robotic vehicles on our roads. The missing stimulus is the Obama era deregulation of asphalt roads, equivalent to the Clinton Era stimulus of telecom deregulation.
Right? Doesn’t our ability to estimate the future narrow down the stimulus actions to the very few stimulus actions that have multipliers in the 10-20 range, and rejecting the stimulus actions that result in multipliers in the .05 to .1 range. The more future we know, the greater the isolation of bad stimulus from good stimulus.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Why don’t you guys ask the children of Argentina what choices a financial collapse gives you:
————–
“Again, I can pin point the exact moment when the entire country realized what was happening. After the 2001 crisis things had been bad, but people in Buenos Aires, the capital city and the richest province, didn’t realize how bad things actually where in the other provinces.
This was until teachers noted that kids had problems with education. You see, they noticed that they had problems to concentrate, that they fell asleep, and that they found it difficult to resolve mathematical equations.
They later found out that this was due to malnutrition, kids where not receiving the minimum amount of nutrients for a healthy working body.
The braking point was when a reporter interviewed a little girl about 8 or 9 years old. The reporter lady asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, the usual kiddy questions. The girl, crying, said that she didn’t want to be anything; that she didn’t care.
The lady asked her why was she crying. She said that she cried because she was hungry, that she had nothing to eat for days, and it was then that I noticed how skinny the little girl actually was.
Seeing children starve is terrible, I guess we all saw those images of the starving kids in Africa. But when you see them speak your same language, with your same accent, in your own country, it hits a nerve.”
February 24th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I’ll never be rich enough to afford a Tibetan nanny, but never so poor I can’t afford a Jamaican one.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:30 am
This isn’t just a matter of relative prices, though: It’s also a matter of what’s socially considered necessary to put one in the class of “respectable” people, and therefore what people prioritize for spending.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:32 am
I’ll never be poor enough not to have cable TV and internet.
I’ll never be rich enough not to fear my whole family being financially ruined by a catastrophic health event (for one family member).
February 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Tom seemed to have the right idea about the exercise, so here’s my stab:
I’ll never be rich enough to download my brain onto the internet, nor so poor as to not keep a cat as pets.
At any rate, I seriously doubt I will ever play World of Warcraft with my cat.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Sara also makes a good point.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Matthew’s Excel chart evidently doesn’t do income pyramids.
Again, from an account of the financial crisis that hit Argentina in 2001:
————–
“It was a social studies class and this teacher, don’t remember if it was a he or a she, was explaining the different kinds of social pyramids.
God! Now I remember more! We even had a text book with those darn, cruel pyramids! The first pyramid explained the basic society. A pyramid with two horizontal lines, dividing those on top (high social class) those in the middle (middle class) and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor, proletarian).
The teacher explained that the middle of the pyramid, the middle class, acted as a cushion between the rich and the poor, taking care of the social stress.
The second pyramid had a big middle section, this was the pyramid that represents 1st world countries. I which the bottom is very thin and arrows show that there is a possibility to go from low to middle class, and from middle to the top of the social pyramid. Our teacher explained that this was the classic, democratic capitalist society, and that on countries such as Europeans one, socialists, the pyramid was very similar but a little more flat, meaning that here is a big middle section, middle class, and small high and low class. There is little difference between the three of them.
The third pyramid showed the communist society. Where arrows from the low and middle class tried to reach the top but they bounced off the line. A small high society and one big low society, cushioned by a minimal middle class section of pyramid.
Then we turned the page and saw the darned fourth pyramid. This one had arrows from the middle class dropping to the low, poor class.
“What is this?” Some of us asked.
The teacher looked at us. “This is us”
“It’s the collapsed country, a country that turns into 3rd world country like in pyramid five where there is almost no middle class to speak, one huge low, poor class , and a very small, very rich, top class.”
“What are those arrows that go from the middle to the bottom of the pyramid?” Someone asked.
You could hear a pin drop. “That is middle class turning into poor”.
I won’t lie, no one cried, though people rubbed their faces, held their heads and their breath.
No one cried, but we all knew at that very moment that all we thought, all we took for granted, simply was not going to happen.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:42 am
My guess is there are plenty of people today who own a computer but can’t afford a place to live. Might’ve surprised John von Neumann.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I never thought I would be wealthy enough to go to outerspace, nor so poor that I couldn’t take daily showers.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I’ll never be so rich that I can vacation anywhere in the world, I’ll never be so poor that I can’t buy a house.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Strange as it may seem, at the poorest my family has ever been we actually essentially had servants. Probably a little more cash in hand and a little less “Buon giorno, professore” would have been nice.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am
But Agatha Christie driving her own car was an essential plot point in that Doctor Who episode!
February 24th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I’ll never be rich enough to own my own spacecraft. I’ll never be so poor I can’t afford to go to the countryside for some fresh air and open skies.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I’m thinking slaves are coming back, in a big way.
Slaves are the new black?
February 24th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
my takeaway from the quote was the relative value of goods and services. Goods get cheaper rapidly due to gains in productivity, which makes services get relatively more expensive. So, working on that theme:
I never thought I would be wealthy enough to own a holo-deck, nor so poor I could not pay someone to cut my hair.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Good point DTM (23). Here’s another whack:
I’ll never be so rich as to be able to have anything like a harem*. And I’ll never be so poor that I won’t be able to own a decent book collection.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
*robots
February 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
But Agatha Christie driving her own car was an essential plot point in that Doctor Who episode!
I was thinking the same thing.
i’ll never be rich enough to grow my own food, nor so poor that recycling makes economical sense for me.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
never thought I would ever be wealthy enough to have robot servants – nor so poor that I wouldn’t have a car
February 24th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Not sure about 30 years from now. But in 100 years, everybody’s gonna own a boat. If you see what I mean.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Matt Steinglass
I’m not sure I see what you mean, unless you mean this.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Lovelock’s take on the future suggests ‘beach front property’ and ‘descendants’.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I think the comment about increases in prodctivity is to the point. The US grew to economic ascendance by adopting the technique of mass production and applying to to more and more diverse areas of production to broadly increase productivity. A side effect of this was that the first product to really take advantage of this technique (automobiles) became realtively much cheaper.
Besides the financial crisis/housing bubble/etc, this current wrenching change is due to the vanishing number of new opportunites to apply mass production principles to economic endeavors (you could argue that mortgage-backed securities are an attempt).
The new productivity multiplier is computerization and information processing technlogies–we use them to do everything from speeding up “paperwork” to modeling viral DNA. We’re switching from one paradigm of impoving procutivity to another, and what becomes cheap in the future will be tied to how this affects the industries to which it is applied.
My personal big woody is how medical advances over the next century will becme what we would consider today to be absolute magic.
So (at the risk of repeating others’ good ideas):
i’ll never be rich enough to live to 150, nor so poor that I can’t afford to own private transportation.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Christie’s comment doesnt feel out of place to me even today. Of course, I am living in China…
February 24th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I think James Gary has it right. Ultimately, I think the future of the world is India. Not that India will improve, but that we’ll fall to their level. And that’s a level where servants are cheaper than cars. Even the Tata Nano costs more than a servant.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
My dad’s father was a chief in the Navy, and during the early 60s, they were stationed in Spain. And in early-60s Spain, their family, on an American enlisted man’s salary, was able to afford a maid.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Thanks to DTM for the compliment.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Circa 3009,
I never thought I would ever be wealthy enough to pay off my slave debt to TAZER the robot overlord – nor so poor that I wouldn’t have a wooden spoon.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Teleporter / iPhone-like device.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
how about this:
i’ll never be rich enough to get a non-emergency heart bypass, nor will i ever be too poor to be able to eat trans-fat foods.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
“nor so poor that I will run out of poor people to eat.”
February 24th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I really doubt that 100 years from now anything but human labor will become expensive. I pick “medical care from a human doctor” and “personal jet.”
February 24th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
When did Agatha Christie say this? She lived from 1890 to 1976. During her lifetime, I’ll wager that far more people owned cars than employed servants. I mean Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, when she was 18 years old.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I’m not sure that as a teenager 30 years ago I would have forseen owning a computer or now being affordable to own a home.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
My great-grandchildren will never be rich enough to eat real beef, but they won’t be so poor as to not have robots.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“When did Agatha Christie say this?”
I believe she said it when she was an adult, but was describing her state of mind when she was a small child.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I mean Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, when she was 18 years old.
Christie lived in Britain, of course, where car ownership grew much more slowly — world wars have a habit of slowing that down — and didn’t really expand rapidly until the 50s. I’d guesstimate that quote, or at least that attitude, to be from the 1930s — Gosford Park or The Remains of the Day time.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
46, 49: Not even that small a child: when she was 15, cars were about equivalent to airplanes in terms of being impractical playthings of the wealthy. Most who owned cars were either amateur mechanics themselves or wealthy enough to keep one on staff.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
it’s all about the exponential reduction in costs of manufactured goods, up against the relative increase in the cost of personal services. Therefore:
“I never thought I would be rich enough to have my own private jet, nor poor enough to not be able to afford to go to a restaurant.”
February 24th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I’ll never be rich enough to have my own asteroid vacation home, but I’ll always be able to afford my Jessica Alba model sex slave robot.
February 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I’ll never be rich enough to drive a BMW or poor enough to want to.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
#14 Sara makes a very good point. For example, in George Gissing’s New Grub Street, a novel about a struggling writer published in 1891, the hero and his wife decide not to fire their maid even when they don’t have enough money for food. To have to open the front door by oneself would have been an admission that one had slipped out of the middle-class. It was more important to have a servant than to eat.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
I’ll never be rich enough to drive a BMW or poor enough to want to.
I’d have picked a different brand, but that one is good.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I will never be rich enough to afford a Spanish speaking domestics nor so poor that I can not afford an English speaking ones
February 24th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
fish will be gone before cows so I would replace beef with sushi
fresh water will be a big deal – the non super elite will be at the very least bathing in recycled urine if not drinking it
genetic engineering/enhancement and replacement parts
so rich I can afford the cloned lungs of a Tour de France winner or so poor I can’t purchase a “donor” one.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:43 am
You’re an idiot, Matt.
100 years from now there will be no humans.
I’ll still be here. You won’t.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I’d sort of combine #27 and #58 and go with “Holodeck/bottle of clean water.”
February 26th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
With the way newspapers are going:
I won’t be rich enough to get a newspaper or so poor I can’t get some news online