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June 25, 2004

The Service Economy

A couple of quick points:

1) These are usually behind by a day or two (the dates are in local
time, and I am past the dateline)

2) I'll figure out a better way of doing this soon - perhaps a blog as
some have suggested. It's hard to set up anything right now on a modem
though and I feel like I'm already incurring massive costs as an
Internet junkie.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | Thursday, June 24,
2004 7:52:00 AM:

I just woke up with no slight amount of pride that I’ve finally adjusted to the local time. I’ve tried to do this [unsuccessfully] last night when I was in Japan.This was my second chance in as many days, since Malaysia is only one hour earlier than Japan.Kristel’s apartment is in a high rise in an area of town with mostly one and two story houses. In some ways it resembles a more suburban neighborhood, though it is probably just a 15-20 minute ride into downtown.I’m impressed by the apartment in what I have always teased Kristel to be a ‘developing country’, a declaration shared by her father who is a stock broker and thus, the family’s expert witness on all things economic.I [di]jest, the truth of the matter is that Kuala Lumpur is mostly a modern city.The apartment is on the top of a 20-story building, a duplex that begins on the 19th floor and has a high-ceiling living room, a chandelier and most importantly, a giant stuffed pig.

I constantly remind myself that a similar set-up in Manhattan would be… probably even out of Chael’s father’s reach. (Chael’s father, as we all know, is the President, CEO, Chairman, founder emeritus and chief propagandist of
Prudential Financial Inc. - http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~rxu/corp/people/chael.htm)
Malaysia is a tropical country so it’s incredibly humid here but not yet uncomfortable. I’m enjoying the cool tropical morning – I just went to the balcony to take a look at the city.Unfortunately, the view is made less appealing by the blanket of haze caused by reckless deforestation in nearby Indonesia (the last time this happened was 1998 when forest fires burned a good chunk of an entire Indonesian state).Kristel’s family currently employs two domestic servants, one of them cooked for us last night. Wealth is relative, and the relative prices between different goods and different services are also completely wacky.In financial monetary wealth, I think there is no question my parents are richer (though truth be told I have no yet sat down and compared income tax statements yet). But I would consider Kristel’s family relatively much better off in Malaysia than mine are in the United States.I won’t even try to estimate percentiles because it would still be hard to capture the entire socioeconomic context. For reference, the servant gets room, board and about 1000 Malaysian Ringitts a month (about US$260 at the fixed 3.8 exchange rate). In Malaysia, there is a wide distinction between the middle-class and common laborers, with the result being that servants are standard in middle-class families. This is also something I am beginning to notice in China, which is successfully weathering the transition into a poorly-run socialist state into the most non-socialistic Communist state I’ve seen (reminds me of that passage in Catch-22 where Yossarian talks about how great it was that dictators like Hitler were so successful in eliminating un-American activity in their home countries). As a sign of the times I think if my parents end up buying a house in China, they would employ at least one domestic servant. Of course, there is also a difference in culture.Even Americans who can afford full-time servants are less likely to do so to the extent it is done here – American culture has traditionally emphasized self-reliance and degraded the role of the servant class.As early as Ben Franklin’s autobiography (don’t know much about history, I’m sure there are earlier works), we get self-reliance as a central tenant of American life.We are also told that Americans have a sacrosanct desire to be free and even if this isn’t a completely accurate picture, it nonetheless testifies to an ideal that does affect the way people think of themselves.There is a servant-class in America, but they tend to be immigrants doing jobs that, so we are told, Americans themselves do not want to do. Now, we are also told that America is becoming more of a service economy. Keeping in mind that service is a very broad term - I still notice more actual service jobs in America. Is it at all a coincidence that this is happening at the same time as a widening income gap?

I would love to ponder this some more but as the servants tend to things I better get myself ready for the day. I’m not sure if Kristel is up yet but I will check and then maybe I will wander around
some more. And for all my proletarian upbringing, I do enjoy having my laundry done for me considering my limited time here. Goodbye for now. Long live the fighters of the revolution.

-Chairman Xu

Balcony View 1: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/harvardsketch/june24-balcony1.jpg
Balcony View 2: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/harvardsketch/june24-balcony2.jpg
Balcony View 3: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/harvardsketch/june24-balcony3.jpg
Balcony View 4: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/harvardsketch/june24-balcony4.jpg
The pig: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/harvardsketch/june24-pig.jpg

Posted by rxu at June 25, 2004 12:33 PM

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