Reply to When did the uber rich stop having live in servants?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Live in help was commonplace for the UMC up through the 1940s.[/b] Cheap immigrant labor and cheap black labor made it possible, along with far fewer labor saving devices. Cooking wasn't as fun as it is today, for example.  And when it's relatively cheap to have many servants, the very wealthy could create lifestyles and elaborate homes based on having full staff, their lives were really that much more formal.

After the war the pool of affordable labor dried up, though lasted another 20 years for inexpensive black labor, but by the late 60s it was rapidly fading out for the UMC (according to my mother, it went from 1940s live in to 1950s daily help who came in the morning and left once she got dinner ready to the 1960s several times a week to the 1970s once a week). Labor costs spared and now comes with all the social and Healthcare benefits if you have full time help.

There are still very wealthy with help but even that world has changed. It's far more private, people don't want to see help around so they're not waited upon at the table, but the help takes on different forms. You have personal assistants, personal stylists, personal chefs, house managers. [/quote]

Something tells me that your definition of UMC is a lot different from mine.  [/quote]

If you read literature of the prewar Era basically every household headed by a white-collar man has a housekeeper. Even if he's in his 20s working as a clerk. Would they have written this if it didn't ring true?[/quote]

Every white collar worker also had an assigned secretary at work to do things like take dictation and messages, even if they weren't in a very high up position, and that's dwindling.[/quote]

At my law firm in the 2010s, I had a secretary as a first year associate. She took notes during meetings, sent ticklers, and other admin stuff. She also picked up my dry cleaning, arranged the town car for me, planned my trips, etc.[/quote]

In my F100 company in the early 2000s I sat in a cube on a floor with everyone else - no admin, no secretary, we booked our own trips and town car through the corporate web interface.  My starting salary was $110k +bonus.  Management had the same set up. Now I’m management and we have a fancier portal but still do everything for ourselves - salary ~$400k +much larger bonus.  Last time I had an office with a door was in grad school.[/quote]

Yeah, that isn't comparable. At all.  It is a much lower paying career in which you didn't even have an office.  Of course you didn't have a secretary.  [/quote]

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