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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lisalisalisa who wrote (17153)	3/21/2002 1:09:12 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The ram was a business expense, so was the laser printer, they weren't toys. They were used to make digital images which are then sold as a product in my business. There is virtually no business that has been untouched by the availability of cheap computing power, but in my business it is making things possible that were impossible just five years ago and unbelievably cheap, cheap in a disruptive sense. Healthcare insurance is more expensive but my point to you bringing up the heart transplant was that it covers a whole host of things that were unbelieveably expensive or not even available not that long ago. Cameras that you swallow that record your digestive tract, drugs that you receive through your skin, surgical devices that only require a small opening. If you were to try to track the improvements in health care you would find that premiums haven't even begun to rise at the rate of procedures that are now covered by that insurance. My health insurance premium stayed level for almost seven years and just recently rose 20% while the number of procedures covered quadrupled. I'm not saying there is no inflation in certain areas, there is, but it is offset by falling prices in other areas. In other areas price stays constant while the product becomes far more usable and functional. I can buy a carved wooden bed that has all the detail and richness of a hand carved bed done by a skilled craftsmen but is made using CAM and automated cutting tools. Its cheaper than hand carved simply because of the automation, not because its imported using a strong dollar or made with coolie labor, but because even the simplest device is manufactured using cheap computing power and raw commodities prices have only just started to rise from a protracted slump. As for housing being more expensive, there are certain areas which have had tremendous inflation. This is not the case in my area although you see expensive housing, you are talking 3-5000 square foot houses with all the bells and whistles where there used to be small 1200 square foot ranchers. You can still buy a house in Baltimore City in a reasonable neighborhood for under 60K that isn't a dump. I know lots of people who live on 20K a year (they don't live in NYC or San Francisco or Seattle). Ten years ago my husband and I spent $3500/year on groceries and last year we spent $4500. In those ten years our combined incomes almost doubled.