When I moved back to Yugoslavia in 1975 with my ex-wife and our four-month old son I was allowed to bring into the country without paying the customs duty a certain number of items from a list of household effects deemed to be indispensable to a modern socialist household: one car, one television set, one washing machine, one record player, one icebox, one cooker, and the like. Customs duty was levied on the second ice box, of course. Besides, there was a list of items considered to be standard tools of certain professions and trades: one drafting table, one cement mixer, one power saw, one film camera, one tractor, one sewing machine. We had only a record player and an electric typewriter. For the typewriter I had to pay customs because the Yugoslav law considered typewriters essential for lawyers only. For years I used this story to portray bureaucratic stupidities typical of the Third World.

During my recent divorce proceedings in the United States I learned that the First World is essentially the same, albeit slightly more sophisticated. To wit, there are no prescribed lists or numbers of items. When my ex-wife’s income and expenditures were compared to mine in an attempt to judge how to divide the burden of our son’s schooling and upkeep, it was considered normal that she spent her money on standard things American such as a car, television set, washing machine, and so on, but it was judged a luxury and an excess that I consumed too much sushi in Japanese restaurants around Cambridge and Boston. The fact that I did not have any of the standard things was deemed totally irrelevant to the case. Worse, my complaint elicited nothing but a puzzled look from the assorted representatives of the legal profession.