Recent comments in /f/nyc

gammison t1_jcwevyu wrote

Reply to comment by FarPassion8384 in Nieuw Amsterdam around 1662 - currently known as New York City, United States by MidnightCh1cken

About 120 years later and inflation from the 1700s is really hard to meaningfully measure but there's a document from the US's first secretary of war where he averaged out his living expenses in New York City in 1785-87.

He spent 215 pounds a year on rent, in today's dollars it's almost exactly 5 grand a month(assuming Knox was denoting things in British pounds sterling, otherwise it's less if he was using New York Pounds, currency in the colonial and early republic period gets weird). On that he rented a house for himself, his brother, his wife, 5 children, two hired servants, one unpaid girl, and two indentured boy servants. The house rent included a stables for two horses. They spent less on the rent than they did on food, which was about 280 2023 dollars a day. They spent just about half of what they paid in rent for the year on wine.

Here's the link.

Edit: If he's using NY Pounds, divide everything by 3 when using an inflation calculator but again inflation doesn't really tell the whole story.

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Status_Fox_1474 t1_jcw08o8 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in NYC has thousands of 3-K vacancies. City Council says that’s an outreach problem by Ok-Training-7587

Right. But in-school 3-k still suffers the problem that there's no real after-school care out of school or in-school (through a third party) -- the providers that I know of begin in Kindergarten at the earliest.

So what it means is that even a "full day 3-k" program means that a parent would have to pick up their child at 2 p.m., which is difficult in a two-worker household. So they'd rather keep their kids in a daycare, where the kid can be picked up later.

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