Posted on 12/16/2024 7:40:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Admittedly, I didn’t read this yet but the headline reminded me that I saw a 32” Fire TV on Amazon recently for under $100. That’s pretty good compared to times of yore. I remember receiving a 13” color TV as a kid that cost that more than that back when.
Rush used to talk about how the wealthy buying the latest and greatest big screen TV would drive the prices down for everyone else. i think he even said “You’re welcome,” after bragging about a new humongous screen he’d bought.
Bah...next they’re gonna be telling us long distance calls aren’t cheaper than they used to be...
I just paid about the same price for a 65” TV that I paid 10 years ago.Now I have an OLED model!
The definition used here is incorrect. Inflation is an increase in the supply of money not an increase in the general price level although increasing the supply almost always causes an increase in prices. The Federal Government running budget deficits and borrowing money against electronic bookkeeping entries causes an increase in the supply of money and inevitably prices.
wow, this chart is stupidly off on the increase in cost of new vehicles.
He starts with a false and thus misleading definition of inflation. Inflation without a modifying adjective is and only is the increase in the money supply, either absolutely or in ratio to the increase of output in the system. It is caused by borrowint and by, to a lesser extent, fractional bank reserves, and by simply “printing” excess money. “Economists” whn speaking of inflation normally speak, instead, of theConsumer Price Indes, which is periodically manipulated to remove those items in the basket which are rising the fastest. Actual inflation, thus is higher than the numbers quoted and termed “inflation” and will be felt in their real extent by the consumer even as the “economists” say that inflation is coming down when they only mean that the CPI is rising more slowly while actual inflation may not be mitigated at all. No matter how the numbers are mitigated real linflation is reducing the value of incomes at a higher rate than the CPI. The CPI is manipulated, for example, by taking steak out of the basket because people are substituting hamburger for the steak they used to buy. Much is done that way. W may be spending just as much as earlier but we are eating less and lower grades of food
One of my uncles paid $700 in 1964 for a console color television.
That would be about $9,000 in 2024 money.
Appliances used to work for decades. Now lucky if they work for a couple of years. I used a 1976 Magnavox19” TV for thirty years. My mom’s washer & dryer more than twenty years. Mom bought pricey replacements 16 years ago and the washer needs new parts every year, and it still takes two or three times old washer did because it is always acting up and stops repeatedly during cycle days it is unbalanced load when it is not. Stuff is cheaper now, but junk. I could go on with more examples. One difference is the USA used to make appliances that were expensive, bit lasted, and men used to be able to support a family on one income.
I just bought a 43” 4K TV for $199...as a computer monitor. In the 90’s a 43” NTSC CRT would have cost a lot more, in ‘old dollars’ too, and the picture was 1000x worse.
The ever-higher cost of health care goes into most things made [motor vehicles & houses] and services[Harvard] produced in the USA.
Homebuyers probably are paying more for health care than lumber.
I have a 14-year-old refrigerator.
I buy as simple as possible.
Blame LBJ etc. Our money used to have stable value. Notice since 1964, money becomes increasingly worth less. No more silver coins. Prices were apparently fairly stable for most of US history. Now, they’ve conditioned us to accept yearly monetary depreciation. There is a reason people have hated bankers and government crooks for centuries.
The average cost of a family’s health coverage is about $25,000/year. Roughly 72% is paid by employers. Consumers pay in the end.
That is smart. I have some (financially) unwise housemates :)
BTTT
Early 2001, I walked into a Circuit City store in Buckhead (Atlanta). They had a floor model 42” Philips plasma on sale for $15,000, reduced from a MSRP of $25,000 because it was used. Picture looked terrible, it was set to torch mode and had the visible banding typical of early generation plasmas.
My 56” Toshiba rear projection widescreen HDTV (TW56X81) looked much better, cost me $3950 + tax at Hi-Fi Buys in December 1999.
Both prices are considered horrendous these days. I recently saw a 75” Vizeo 4K TV at Walmart for $498 and a 65” off brand for $298.
They had a 98” TCL for $1398, would have pretty much covered the whole wall in smallish family room/den, the wife put the kibosh on any idea of a screen that size.
And that should be Vizio, not Vizeo.
#2 I bought a 32” Sony Bravia for $900...
I now have a LG 42” tv I bought in 2015 but do not remember the price. Still works great. I have a tv antenna plugged in and a Roku box plugged in and can watch thousands of shows for free using the Youtube app, Pluto tv and several others. Today Amazon sells that size tv for $100 to $200.
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