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Comment by websiteapi | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical that anything actually is cheaper when normalized by offset wages. like sure you can buy a TV for cheaper, but isn't that just because now you have cheap labor and arbitrage? software is the main exception here. what physical product is actually cheaper when you remove offset labor arbitrage?

this would also explain why things that are not subject to said arbitrage do not actually get cheaper, e.g. anything that must be done locally.

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Don’t automation technologies improve the productivity of labor?

If I can make one widget per hour, and some new tool lets me make 10 widgets per hour?

Conventional economic theory suggests the gain will be split between the widget-maker and the widget-consumer, in proportions determined by the relative slopes of the supply-demand curves, but definitely the product will become somewhat cheaper.

sure, but take furniture - is high quality furniture cheaper today than 50 years ago, normalized by inflation? from my investigation the answer is no.

It depends on what you mean by "high quality", I suspect. Above a relatively low floor, price of furniture seems unrelated to (e.g.) sturdiness or expected lifespan. It's more like fashion, in that you are paying for names or decoration.

Probably a difficult question to answer. My sense is that high quality new hardwood furniture hasn't gotten especially more expensive over recent time (adjusted for inflation) but you'd probably have to ask someone in the industry who is more plugged into various cost inputs.

>seems unrelated to (e.g.) sturdiness or expected lifespan

I'll disagree somewhat. At least in New England, there are smallish manufacturers who make high quality products that you're not going to find in most, if any, of the large retailers.

This is exactly Baumol: If by “high quality” you mean “difficult to mass produce” then yes, the lack of productivity gains in hand-made furniture makes real costs go up.

Of course, it’s easy to mass produce sturdy furniture, such as office furniture. But it’s not what consumers think of as “high quality”.

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