(09-17-2019 07:17 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: Just have to look at real costs over time to see how things have changed with respect to affordability. Costs of card have remained relatively neutral, along with apparel and household furnishings.
While you’re right that increase in quality (for lack of a better word) has increased, at the same time the costs to produce those increases has sometimes increased (see TV technology). So I don’t think it’s so easy to say that cars would be appreciably cheaper without X, because the cost of X may be inconsequential.
https://howmuch.net/articles/price-chang...t-20-years
What I'm saying is the cost to deliver 3 network stations and 2 local access ones (what we had in the 1970's) is vastly less than what it takes to deliver thye hundreds of channels plus all of the other content we have.
And the cost to build a 1972 F150 in 2020 with 1972 bumpers, tire technology, radio, fuel economy and crumple zones is a small fraction of what it costs to build a 2020 F150 in 2020.
Lots of the 'x' you're talking about, like being able to watch 100 channels or surf the internet or fix nearsightedness or transplant a heart or or survuve a 50mph crash or have almost no damage from a 5mph one or ship product anywhere overnight or get fruit from Chile in winter etc etc, the cost in previous years was infinite.
Your article absolutely misses the fact of healthcare entirely. In 1998, the standard of care for heart disease was a $100,000 surgery with a 20% survival rate, which was often denied. Today that same procedure costs $20,000 and the survival rate is 80% and is almost always covered. The cost goes up only because before we only gave that care to people who were absolutely going to die without it and had a reasonable life ahead of them. Today we give it to people experiencing relatively mild symptoms or are 90 years old.
Even child care and nursery costs are being manipulated. I'd point out that 'day care' is one of those areas where I suspect you would be correctly arguing that its hard to earn 'a living wage'... yet costs have risen because the demand for care now includes services (or insurance and class size limits) that didn't happen before.
Otherwise, such an obviously labor intensive industry would be far closer to the avg hourly earnings chart
Absolutely, the cost of the components of a TV have gone down by a ton, but the cost of the content has gone up 100 times. FOr cars, it's the cost of regulation and standards. For daycare or healthcare, the costs of insurance, regulation and the demands from consumers for more/better care.
Lasix surgery used to cost $10,000, was done in a hospital and you were in the hospital for 2 days. Now it's more like $1500 at an 'eye center' and you go home in a few hours.
Education is a bit of a farce and books are a complete scam. There are projects (Rice is part of them) who provide most text books for most classes for free. Education, the game is to charge $50k and then give most students scholarships to make the average cost of attendance more like $15k. Of course the numbers vary, but that's why RIce used to charge a low tuition and then subsidize professors with the endowment. Now they subsidize students and pay the professors from the revenue.
