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Comment by Kozmik1 | Hacker News Reader

Check out those prices! That Atari 800 at $699 would be $2,150 today adjusted for inflation. I guess it was pretty capable but today you could have a hell of a computer for that price!

The sewing machine at $300 is $920 today and looks basic as heck. I bought a computerized sewing machine last year for $400 which sews 40 stitches and is basically automated. You could get a basic Singer today for 85 bucks.

Those microwaves would come in at about $1,200 in today’s dollars. Most of us spend about $50 on one today, granted the quality is probably crap.

How did people afford to buy anything back then? I recall my parents getting the Beta Max player, big 30” TV and satellite dish back in the early 1980s (we lived in the country). Throw in a stereo and a few kitchen appliances and I think it would rival what they paid for our house!

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Just from my memories, we didn’t have as much stuff competing for our income. There were no cell phones or ISP bills, and we didn’t have cable TV either. This made it easier to save a little bit every month to afford these more expensive items. It really was a simpler time.

Also, if a sewing machine or microwave broke, you would get it repaired rather than replaced with a new one. It was expected that these big ticket items were long-term purchases. Because of that, people tended to care a bit more about the reputation of the brand and how easily you could get things serviced. Sears, for example, had service centers everywhere.

You also didn't have the internet hype machine (i.e. people with no experience in whatever you're asking about who feel compelled to answer anyway) telling you that you that your off brand blender with 99% the MBTF of the name brand one is vastly inferior.

The television advertising hype machine was running full force in the 80s, and most people watched hours of television every day. Do not imagine that information was more reliable back then. Despite the internet's imperfections, it is much easier to find good product information now.

The TV commercial was trying to sell you something and you knew it. You don't know whether the moron on HN/Reddit/whatever actually believes what they're saying about a product or is lying to you to justify their own purchase.

You can find product specs much easier these days but subjective product information is no easier to come by. Well, it's easier to come by, but you can't easily pick it out from the sea of BS.

I knew of a decent number of people with cable TV in the early 80s, but it was also not uncommon to have a powered antenna on the roof that you would rotate to the ideal orientation to receive a channel via a dial. I do remember a long period of time where it was common to rent the VCR along with the VHS video tape containing the movie you wanted to watch. This was even a thing for the Nintendo 64.

When I was a kid, my mother would take me and my brother to Blockbuster every Friday. We could each rent a game. Every time we'd go, we'd beg her to let us rent whatever the newest console was at the time (mostly Playstation, though we rented GameBoy Color a few times, too).

She'd give in occasionally. After we had finally come to own a PS1 and N64, my brother and I had a paper route and would buy cheap used games instead of renting.

> Also, if a sewing machine or microwave broke, you would get it repaired rather than replaced with a new one

This is a big trade-off. The way things are now, I wouldn't mind swinging back that way a bit. Our houses are filled with electronics that are one failed component away from being trash.

On top of that, it's pretty hard to know if you're buying garbage or not, even from retailers that should be reputable. (I blame Amazon for setting that trend).

On top of all of this, you have the horrific effects on the environment of plastic waste and excessive manufacturing.

When considering "reputable brands" look at the length of warranty on an item. We purchased a countertop oven late last year. The warranty was five years parts & labour. Every major brand was one year warranty. The closet we could get was a single major brand with a three year warranty. That's my litmus test these days; not branding, not marketing, not price, not availability, not "reviews", not Consumer Reports. One number - how long is your warranty and does it cover parts and labour?

> Just from my memories, we didn’t have as much stuff competing for our income. There were no cell phones or ISP bills, and we didn’t have cable TV either.

There were bills back then that people had, that you don't have today.

* Daily newspaper subscription

* Telephone line (plus long distance calls...expensive back then)

* Cigarettes - people used to smoke every day

Cable TV was not as popular but many people had it in the 80's. Premium channels as well. People still rented movies back then, bought VCR's, records, tapes, they bought more magazines and books.

Yeah, we had two telephone bills into the mid 90s. One for the phone line, and one for long distance. And before my time, you used to have to rent the phone from the phone company as well.

I learned about microwave ovens at my grandma's house. We couldn't afford one. She had one that was so old it had dials on it.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nma...

Given the bits of family finances I heard I'm sure she bought it new, not used. She had a stove the size of a fridge tipped over too. It had its own wall in the kitchen. I have never seen its like in any other house, movie or TV show (I did at one point rent a house that had the oven from Bewitched in it as recently as 2010. That was a weird beast of an oven. Burned the fuck out of my hand when I accidentally set it to 'broil' and touched the glass to see if it was on. Luckily it was my left hand but still)

For modern microwave ovens, the dials are actually the most expensive parts. The alternative computerized fake keys and display are much cheaper.

Go and live out in the country for a few months. Take nothing with you but the clothes on your back. You'll be amazed. You don't really need all the stuff you think you need. From my perspective growing up in the 70's if you had a microwave, a sewing machine, and an Atari machine, you were wealthy. This video is good evidence of that.

Very true. Growing up in the 1970s, we did not have a computer. I wrote papers and reports for school using a typewriter. We did not have a microwave. We did not have a dishwasher. We had a 14" TV. Home music system was a record player. No video games at home. The phone was mounted on the wall, provided by the phone company, shared by everyone in the house. We were very much middle class, my parents were probably more frugal than most but this was pretty typical of all my friends.

The lower prices we pay now are the result of decades of outsourcing, automation, and value engineering.

Back in the day, your average family didn't pay $1,200 for a microwave, they went without. We didn't have a microwave, or a dishwasher, or most of the other kitchen appliances people now enjoy. Those things were for rich people. We cooked popcorn on the stove and washed the dishes in the sink afterwards.

> How did people afford to buy anything back then?

Gadgets and appliances were a lot more costly back then but housing, tuition, health care, and food were all quite a bit cheaper.

We've had 30+ years of "disinflation" or "in-deflation" which is high inflation in everything you need and deflation in everything else.

The common denominator in the things that have inflated is that they're hard to outsource.

Food was not cheaper back then, it is cheaper now. The food market is much more global and mechanized than it was in the 80s.

When I was younger, "imported food" was a novelty because the local in-season food was all you could normally get.

Now it's (hilariously) the opposite.

I stand a bit corrected on food but I think tuition and health care and especially housing are not debatable. Housing is particularly bad and overwhelms any improvements in food.

The low prices for bigger ticket items like college tuition and houses more than made up the difference. Yes, even after adjusting for inflation.

Yup, I remember my parents being very frugal but then realized they bought an Intellivision for us kids that cost $400 in the mid-80s, when the median household income was ~$20k.

With household incomes being almost $70k today, that's like spending $1400 on a video game system today.

What's the price of a decent gaming PC these days? About the same?

I still remember what I paid for a PC in 1997.... $3500 for a dell with 128MB of ram, 400 MHz Pentium II, 10MB HD, zip drive, 21 inch monitor... My wife's company paid for half of it.. otherwise would have bough a cheaper one... 2 years later you could buy all that for less than half with a 1GHZ P III

Define 'decent'.

Since ~ 1995 a decent PC (runs everything, not a mind blowing rig) were always around $2000 with monitor, with a sharp decline to $1000 around late '00 and a slight increase since then but there is nothing a $200 GPU with a decent CPU and enough amount of RAM can't what a rig $4000+ can't do, only slower.

This era had something called "layaway" -- put a percentage down and then you could make random incremental payments and take it home when it was fully paid for.

This was used much more frequently than children of the era might remember.

Which people often do with PC builds. Not much different in terms of cost.

Depends.

If my memory serves me well, I did a $320 build somewhere in ~2010 for a friend. For the giggles I launched F.E.A.R. on it. It worked.

The microwave was relatively new back then, but it was so useful that everyone was willing to save up for one. Sewing machines and Atari 800 … not so much. Atari 2600 was worth the expense except for Pac Man and E.T.

This was some years before consumer goods all being made in China and sold at bigger box stores and online at much lower cost. Sears was never seen as a bargain hunters store, and alas it didn’t last in the age of low margin consumer goods retailers.

Remember that an Apple at the time, which lacked a great many of the Atari's capabilities, was about double that.

I've mentioned a time or two that if you think it's a recession now, good thing you didn't experience the mid-70s or early-80s.

And inflation? We bought stuff like a microwave, or TV, or game system maybe once, years apart.

> How did people afford to buy anything back then?

Because that was pretty much all you bought. Things were, indeed, simpler then. People didn't need McMansions to hold all their shit.

Yes, and those prices likely didn't include any peripherals. If you wanted a tape drive ("program recorder"), floppy drive, or modem you paid extra.

> Those microwaves would come in at about $1,200 in today’s dollars. Most of us spend about $50 on one today, granted the quality is probably crap.

The family microwave when I was a kid was a Magnavox Carousel. It was BIG. It had a very simple dial to set the time and power. I despise todays kitchen appliances with membrane keypads and having to hit TIME 2 0 0 COOK

My parents only got rid of that thing recently.

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