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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HPilot who wrote (115320)	10/12/2011 11:53:47 AM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224748

No way, especially if you consider that new cars are so boring. I hardly use the new gadgets except cruise control, which actually you could get in Caddies back then. You could get it but now you can get it on cheaper cars. Don't compare the nominal prices, at the very least compare inflation adjusted prices, also consider percentage of average or typical income. What exactly do you mean by boring? I'm sure plenty of cars back then where boring as well. The typical modern car will be more powerful if that's what your considering (yes there were muscle cars and sports cars back then, but you can't reasonably compare them to today's cheap cars, compare them to performance cars today). Your appliance chart also doesn't prove any thing. Many of these things were simply not available in the past, or were not as reliable. Exactly. The fact that they are available and reliable now, is one way that our lives are better off now. Also things that where available where sometimes a lot more expensive, even in nominal dollars, and esp. as a percentage of income. (And if its not available, effectively its price is infinite) Also there are other charts, for example percentage of disposable income spent on food is way down, despite the fact that people eat out more. But perhaps you are right in a way, maybe its not the economy but our expensive phone and cable bills, they are about ten times higher then they were back then, in fact there was no cable bill at all. Yes we buy more things and services now. People with higher real incomes can struggle to meet expectations because the expectations are higher. We spent more money on trips, sporting events, concerts, dining out, movies, etc. OK, but that's not the norm. Attendance at sporting events and concerts is up, and I think people also dine out more. Maybe people don't got to the movies quite as often (I think total attendance is up, but not as much as the population is, but I'm not sure about that), but they definitely travel more and that's much more expensive than going to the movies.