Some personal and economic reflections
My wife and I went to see Crazy Rich Asians last week and I liked it a lot. I’ve been thinking about why. The 2 main reasons are personal, the second one of which involves economics.
The two things I didn’t like, but they were minor, were economic in nature.
Personal
The obvious reason is that this is a love story. I’m a sucker for love stories. Enough said. Almost. One scene I particularly loved was the wedding scene, especially the special rendition of the song “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” by Kina Grannis.
The less-obvious personal reason is economic. A little background will help. When I was between the ages of 12 to 14, my family would sometimes, mainly during the winter, drive the 50 miles from Carman to Winnipeg on a Saturday. We would get there at about 11 a.m. and would split up with a plan to rendezvous at the Viscount Gort Hotel at about 6 p.m. for dinner and then the drive home. I don’t remember what my brother, sister, mother, or father did but I remember clearly what I did. I would go to Eaton’s and Hudson’s Bay department stores and wander around, looking at all the things I would like to buy that there was no way I would buy. I couldn’t afford most of them and even the ones I could afford I didn’t value enough given my slim resources. But in the mid-afternoon, I would go to a movie. The one that stands out clearly is the 3rd James Bond movie, Goldfinger.
When Shirley Bassey came on and knocked it out of the park with the Goldfinger song, I was hooked. Then there were beautiful women, great stunts, great wealth, and great gadgets. I was a very shy boy who had the guts to ask one young girl out exactly twice during that period and didn’t have the guts to hold her hand at the movies we had gone to in Carman. So just seeing all these beautiful women I could enjoy was special. But what was really special was the wealth: private jets, Lincoln Continentals, sports cars, etc. I was living in a town of 1,200 people and the temperature outside was probably about 20 degrees. Our family income was probably just at the median, but my father saved a lot because he was so worried about another depression, so we consumed as if were at about the 35th percentile. One example: Our first TV was a used 19-inch 1955 Philco–and we we bought it in January 1961. I think we were the last family in town to get a TV. So everything about the movie Goldfinger was glamorous to this prairie boy.
In 2018, by contrast, although co-blogger Bryan Caplan disagrees with me, I am quite wealthy. Our $900K house has only about a $62K mortgage on it and both of our relatively new cars are almost paid for. And they are, as co-blogger Scott Sumner has pointed out, luxury cars. My wife drives a 2013 Mazda and I drive a 2014 (I think) Camry.
If we want, we can afford to fly anywhere in the world and still not touch our retirement assets of over $1 million. (First-class would be a different issue. 🙂 Also, I gather that the stock market fell today and so I think my wealth is less than it was yesterday.) We can eat out at nice restaurants when we want. So the James Bond movies don’t quite do it for me any more.
Enter Crazy Rich Asians. The wealth–in cars, houses, boats, etc.–is incredible. So I get a few of the same positive vibes watching that movie, comparing what they have to what I have, that I got watching Goldfinger when I was 13. I love wealth, not only when I have it, but also when I see it.
Minor Economic Faults
Almost all of the action happens in Singapore. Remember that Singapore is a small island packed with people. So where the heck are the vehicles? Wherever they drive, they go normal speeds because there are zero traffic jams. Really? As I said, this is a minor fault.
The other minor fault is in one of the early scenes where Rachel is an economics professor teaching game theory by playing poker in front of her class against her teaching assistant. The moral of the story, she tells the class, after she beats her TA with a bluff, is that his mistake was that instead of playing to win, he played not to lose. What principle of game theory, exactly, does that illustrate? So just as in A Beautiful Mind, when movie writers wanted to lay out something even a little complicated in game theory, they messed it up.
READER COMMENTS
Matthias Goergens
Oct 11 2018 at 8:30pm
I know the movie chose their vehicle speeds for dramatic reasons, and not realism. But there really are generally no traffic jams in Singapore.
(We can however get heavier than usual, slow moving traffic.)
There are multiple reasons, mostly tight taxation and supply restrictions on cars: certificate of entitlement, high petrol taxes, congestion charge that’s dynamically priced to keep average speeds up, etc.
The certificate of entitlement is the permit to operate a car. There are limited to about 1 million total and run for 10 years each. About one percent of permits expire every month and are re-issued via a sealed bit, every winner pays the lowest winning bid auction.
The other side of the coin is that Singapore has excellent public transport and a sanely regulated taxi industry. So people don’t need to have cars, making the restrictions above less draconian. The whole city is also rather small in area.
David Henderson
Oct 11 2018 at 11:18pm
Informative. Thanks, Matthias.
HH
Oct 11 2018 at 8:42pm
Minor correction: The movie is called A Beautiful Mind.
David Henderson
Oct 11 2018 at 11:19pm
Oops. Thanks. And I even used to be friends with the author.
nobody.really
Oct 12 2018 at 2:37am
Economist Steve Landsburg also discussed economics and Goldfinger—specifically, the plan to drive up gold prices by detonating a dirty bomb inside Ft. Knox, irradiating the gold supply there for the next 58 years. But did anyone really expect that the US was going to circulate/trade its gold supply? And if not, Landsburg pondered, then how would this plan influence gold prices?
I remarked that this line of thought revealed so much about the economist mindset. I reminded him that the film also featured a beautiful woman named Pussy Galore—again, that’s PUSSY GALORE. Yet Landsburg spend the film pondering commodity prices?
This explains why economists command such high salaries: People with those attributes are rare. And this attributes are rare because people with these attributes apparently lack the breeding reflex the influences the rest of us.
For my part, I only studied economics because one of the professor’s bumper stickers said “Economists do it with models.” (Talk about your bait & switch….)
David Henderson
Oct 12 2018 at 1:02pm
For my part, I only studied economics because one of the professor’s bumper stickers said “Economists do it with models.” (Talk about your bait & switch….)
LOL. Yes, I admit that I didn’t think about the effect on gold prices of irradiating non-circulating gold. The women were more of a draw. But again, I was 13.
I did find one huge absurd hole in the plot, though, even at age 13. Why bring all the Mafia types in from around the country, tell them your plan, and then murder them? The only way that advanced the narrative was because James Bond was eavesdropping. There wasn’t a way to advance the narrative with something more plausible? Hard to believe.
Jim Rose
Oct 12 2018 at 3:10am
Yes, one of the best films have seen for a while and one of the funniest
john hare
Oct 12 2018 at 5:41am
It is strange how different people react to the visible wealth of others. Some of it I find inspiring, and some I see as stupid. Inspiring when I see people getting ahead and doing well. Stupid when I see people living paycheck to paycheck because they try to live beyond their actual means. Expensive cars, vacations, and houses are stupid when a temporary income drop causes serious financial stress.
I have seen other people that get angry at the affluence of others. The statement that “I don’t want to see other people doing better that us” is one I have heard many times. It is a fair indicator that they will never experience better.
Dylan
Oct 12 2018 at 12:23pm
The family bought our first TV in 1983, and it was black and white!
David Henderson
Oct 12 2018 at 1:03pm
Wow!
Hazel Meade
Oct 12 2018 at 1:55pm
A Camry isn’t really a luxury car. I drive a Camry. It’s an affordable mid-size sedan. Unless you’ve got the top of the line trim, like heated seats and stuff.
David Henderson
Oct 12 2018 at 3:16pm
A Camry isn’t really a luxury car.
See the 7th Pillar of Economic Wisdom.
My guess is that our different perspectives represent different ages. You should have seen and driven the cars we had in the 1950s, 1960, and 1970s.
john hare
Oct 12 2018 at 6:27pm
Compared to the earlier cars, pretty much everything is a luxury car now. Go to an old car show where they have restored to factory original to see the difference.
I remember when a very high percentage of the cars on the road had visible rust or bondo, and either of them are very unusual now. 100,000 miles on a car normally meant that it was ready for the junkyard or at least had had an engine rebuild. When was the last time you got lost or had a flat tire? Manual transmissions were standard and reliability was not the best. Jumper cables lately?
I am happy to have power windows, cruise, keyless entry, and tilt wheel in even the 10+ year old trucks I buy cheap. Luxury compared top of the heap, maybe not. Compared to yesteryear, most definitely. I will admit to not knowing the particulars of the cars David mentioned.
nobody.really
Oct 13 2018 at 12:28am
I remind people who aspire to “live like a king” that if we sentenced prisoners to live in the same manner as medieval kings, they’d sue for cruel and unusual punishment. Or they’d try–but, of course, as medieval kings, they wouldn’t have any legal claim not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment. Moral: One era’s luxury is another era’s torture.
Tom Means
Oct 12 2018 at 2:11pm
My parents were similar to yours. They bought their first home in 1954 in a new tract home in a neighborhood consisting of blue collar and white collar workers. After a few years most of the white collar workers traded up to nicer homes. My parents stayed. My dad was a chemist working at a refinery. Made good money but spent like it was still a depression economy. My dad purchased used cars about 3-4 years old. We were the last family on our block to buy a color TV.
David Henderson
Oct 12 2018 at 3:16pm
Interesting.
Ricardo
Oct 12 2018 at 3:26pm
When I was a kid, I played on a Pop Warner football team called the Bills. Our uniforms were orange and black. We did not have a lot of money… so we had a black and white TV. One day I was at a friend’s house, and his family had color TV. I was shocked to see that the Buffalo Bills did not wear orange and black uniforms.
(First color TV in 1989…)
When I lived in Britain for a few years, the license fee for a black and white TV was lower than for a color TV. So I had a black and white TV there too. (There were four channels. This was pretty cool, because Channel 4 was new.)
David Henderson
Oct 12 2018 at 5:50pm
Great story about uniform colors.
That reminds me of an experience I had. In November 1979, my apartment in Oakland, CA was burgled and the burglars took my black and white TV. I tried to go without a TV, but at around Christmas 1979 the Soviets made President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s dream come true by invading Afghanistan at around Christmas 1979, I wanted a TV to follow things. So I got my first color TV.
Fast forward to Easter 1980 when the traditional Wizard of Oz movie was played. Imagine my surprise when the gold path really looks like gold and the Emerald City is indeed green.
nobody.really
Oct 13 2018 at 12:12am
Somewhat similar story: Mom was surprised to hear me describing the film Yellow Submarine to my friends–including a description of the bold colors–given that we’d only seen the film on a black & white TV. But I’d seen the poster, so I perceived the images in the colors I knew them to have–just as I perceived everything else I saw on TV, I guess.
I became really conscious of the fact that our TV didn’t show color only when we made a special trip to a neighbor’s house to see the first broadcast of Sesame Street.
Tom West
Oct 14 2018 at 10:30pm
After a childhood in the 70’s of avidly seeing re-runs of the original Star Trek series in black and white, it looked all wrong when I finally saw it in colour in the mid-80’s.
It still feels garish when I see it now compared to what I know it “should” look like.
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