Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bart13 who wrote (100308)

4/23/2013 12:57:52 PM

From: Maurice Winn

1 Recommendation Respond to of 217676

<And it costs 12-13x more, and gets very little better mpg. >

The 2013 Corolla is vastly better in bells and whistles, quality and life expectancy. The 12-13 x is due to dilution of money, mostly though of course the bells cost lots of dollars and so do the whistles, not to mention the air conditioning which also has an impact on mpg as does the increased weight of all the bells and whistles and larger size.
< 1970 average car cost in hours worked, at average hourly earnings, 1070.
2012 average car cost in hours worked, at average hourly earnings, 1568.>
Maybe somewhere those figures applied. Not in NZ. But those figures don't acknowledge all the extras included in the 2012 car.

What those figures mean is that people allocate something like half a year's pay to their [new] car.

What those figures also hint at is that the average hourly earnings have dropped enormously = with 40 million Mexican invaders and competition from Made in China and elsewhere, of course average pay dropped in the USA [which I guess is where your figures apply].

In NZ, in 1970 cars were very expensive even if they were perforated with rust and regularly broke down. Now they are a dime a dozen for perfectly good second hand Japanese imports. I bought a car for NZ$1800 a few weeks ago as a runabout for visiting family. It does need a transmission repair and is high mileage [250,000 km] but is in otherwise very nice condition. That's absurdly cheap compared with back in 1970 when such a miracle of modernity did not exist at any price. Just the radio would have cost five times that back in 1970, let alone the tow bar, air conditioning, power steering and amazing tyres which never wear out - the old cross ply tyres with gravel roads were short on life.

It's fairly easy to see that life is vastly better now though you seem to be arguing that it isn't. Nobody back in 1970 bought visiting relatives a little runabout like that. Neither did visiting relatives pop over to NZ from London for a bit of a holiday, flying in an A380 - run some numbers on worldwide travel to see a vast improvement too. DC8 to London from Auckland versus A380.

Mqurice