I have discussed Russell Roberts’ book, The Price of Everything, here, here, and here. At one point in the book, he suggests that today even poor people have servants.
As a way of measuring increasing standard of living in the last hundred years, the main character in his book compares a rich guy served dinner by a waiter today to a rich guy 100 years ago served dinner by a servant.
As a starting point, consider one of Prof. Roberts’ comparisons: the rich guy back then had an expensive, fancy watch while the servant had no watch. Today, the rich guy has an exquisitely expensive, fancy watch, while the waiter has an inexpensive digital watch.
Which do you suppose keeps better time and requires less maintenance?