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Comment by NoblePublius | Hacker News Reader

How much did a 55” LCD TV cost in 1973? Cuz they’re $249 now.

Using that logic, a homeless person with a casio watch is better off than Charlemagne.

We should be comparing now with now. And most importantly, we should be comparing wealth inequality because wealth translates directly to power and wealth inequality means power inequality.

Nobody is competing against anyone from 1973 or 1873. We are competing against people today. And the accumulation of wealth and power by a small group of elites should concern everyone regardless of the price of insignificant trinkets.

Can you live in a TV and eat it? Cause the average rent was $175 dollars a month

http://www.littlehouseinthevalley.com/cost-of-living-compari...

An average car cost $4,000. So about 1/10th. Applying that to rent, the rent would be $1750, which is pretty close.

Now do that same analysis with average/mean pay scales and compare. Then the article will make sense.

1. Are you sure that the average car doesn't cost $25k, instead?

2. What was the average wage?

There's a great graphic that shows what goods/services are more and less expensive now vs 1998.

https://cdn.howmuch.net/articles/price-changes-in-usa-in-pas...

TVs are definitely more affordable, but Hospital Services and College is really not. Somewhat surprisingly it looks like Housing is more affordable (rising, but less than average earnings).

I think these longitudinal studies of the wage/cost relationships are really valuable as they provide a lot of insight into what people feel about the economy and where things are going.

I'd like to see that same graph but going back to 1980.

Back in the early 80s you could buy a house in an expensive state (NY) for about 50-60k but today a similar house goes for around 400k.

But a lot of people in the 80s and early 90s made equal or more money than they do today, like a legit dollar for dollar amount more. Certain industries paid 35k-40k a year back then but pay 30-35k today, which is a massive difference considering how much more things are today than back in the 80s.

Income, potential to increase income, and income security is so location dependent, that I don't think one can easily compare housing costs throughout the years. The places that are expected to grow in the future have rapidly increasing housing costs, whereas the places that are expected to decline have shrinking housing costs.

Yeah, they take that into account when calculating inflation, which is why CPI is quoted at 1% when the cost of housing, food, gas, health care, college tuition (i.e. everything you actually need) is more like 10%.

Great. Now let's do college.

People need multiple things. A big-screen TV is of no help to someone dying of measles.

Okay, I don't think you should be downvoted to oblivion, but this is a hard point to get right.

Yes, we should account for technological improvements in the quality of our lives. In fact, it's the only way to have long-term improvement in real, appropriately measured consumption. And yes, there are creature comforts you can buy today that were darn near impossible back then.

But ... you need to weight these improvements by relative impact. Yes, TVs are better. But how much utility they can really add to your life is limited. They're little comfort when the important things -- like not being bankrupted by health care costs -- eat up all the rest.

If you buy too much into the importance of better TVs, you end up like Fed banker William Dudley, and insist that living costs went down, even as every bill went up, because iPads are faster.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-dudley-ipad-idUST...

The $249 TV brought a billion Asians and Latinos out of extreme poverty. If you can afford the TV, you are the 1%.

No, nobody left poverty because the price of a bigscreen TV fell below $250.

Edit: nor were the jobs provided by that factory a proximate cause.

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