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I wasn’t old enough at the time to remember the relative pricing of those things as a consumer, but things like walkmans, televisions, and IBM laptops seemed mu

• NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Sony themselves were perhaps. There were plenty lower down the market made in Japan brands though, such as Aiwa, Akai, Sharp and dozens of others. A TV was a cheap almost commodity thing when CRT based by the 80s. Only the arrival of widescreen CRT and flat screens that pushed the prices into the absurd. I imagine the 60s and 70s was the era for TV prices to be dropping. Sure there's been a little inflation and price rises too. Overall the switch to China hasn't benefited first world consumers from price benefits from the brands. The price benefits have been in places like Primark with a £1 T shirt and the unknown brands on Amazon marketplace. A pair of Levis or an Apple device is just as "for the affluent" as they've ever been. Often more so, despite manufacture moving somewhere cheap.