4 ms·

As the article notes, some things like consumer electronics are still getting cheaper.

cco 7y ago
File those under "basically irrelevant" in my opinion. Once you have a relatively cheap phone, you're basically satisfied your Maslow hierarchy for technology, i.e. you can accomplish most of the requirements of existing as a digital citizen albeit you may not be as efficient as those with more devices. The real labor saving devices, dishwasher, clothes washer, refrigerator etc. were/are very meaningful but haven't moved much in the last 20 years. Education, housing, food, clothing, etc. are far more important and relevant to what it means to live a decent life in the 21st century.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  I agree that you don't need a TV and I don't have one either. But other people keep buying them anyway, so it makes sense to include them in a statistical measure of average households.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Which is why they are added when new and expensive - it flatters the real inflation measures and saves governments money longer term.
lonelappde 7y ago
This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology. This is a very confused comment. The part that's coherent enough to clearly identify what is wrong is that it refers to “fiscal policy” when it means “monetary policy”, which is the policy targeted at particular inflation rates. But even aside from that, the whole claim is incoherent.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    The comment may be poorly worded, but the point is sound. Every bit of technological progress or economic optimization should result in naturally decreasing prices, just as we've come to expect in the technology sector. This goes for both offshoring in general as well as Walmart's replacement of locally-run businesses. Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor. But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time".
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Every bit of technological progress or economic optimization should result in naturally decreasing prices Not in dollar terms, especially when dollars are being deliverately managed so that the dollar cost of a labor hour increases over time. In terms of labor-hours, sure. > Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor. No, lower nominal (dollar) prices would not. Lower real prices are an incoherent concept. Lower labor-hour-equivalent prices would if and only if lower labor demand meant equal employment but reduced hours, otherwise it would just exacerbate the tangible inequality resulting from reduced labor demand. > But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time". But, it's not: that's not what targeting low positive inflation is. That would only be the overt policy if there was an overt policy to reatrict real wage gains. While I do think (at least large portions of) one of the two major parties is actively and deliberately pursuing policies with that goal, it's very much not an overt policy.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        > Not in dollar terms, especially when dollars are being deliverately managed so that the dollar cost of a labor hour increases over time. This is sophomoric relativism - achieving lower day-to-day prices is exactly how market competition works. It's tautological to justify a policy of changing the value of a dollar by rejecting analysis in terms of an unchanged dollar. When creating a new variable, you have to analyze it in terms of existing variables. > lower nominal (dollar) prices would not [help make up for the reduced demand for labor] It very clearly would if businesses said "we're going to reduce everyone's hours by 20%" while everyone's expenses went down 20% - everyone's budget would remain the same. I'll give you that this won't happen so pleasantly uniformly. But posit E who remains employed, and U who is laid off. If the expenses of four such E's go down, they now have extra money to spend locally to create a new job for U. Whereas if the E's expenses remain the same, then U's only options to get money are to head towards where it is being printed or compete with the E's in a race to the bottom (which is why the price of easily-interchangeable labor is now set by "minimum wage" rather than the market). > that's not what targeting low positive inflation is. An explicit goal of inflationary monetary policy is to drive "full employment". So yes, pushing everyone to keep working full time is one of its overt goals. A goal that is regressive in the face of needing ever-less labor. I'm obviously not going to convince you on the merits of this, especially in a few comments, and that's fine. It's just fundamentally dishonest to discard a political viewpoint by condescending from a paradigm that rules out said political viewpoint by construction.

cco 7y ago

File those under "basically irrelevant" in my opinion. Once you have a relatively cheap phone, you're basically satisfied your Maslow hierarchy for technology, i.e. you can accomplish most of the requirements of existing as a digital citizen albeit you may not be as efficient as those with more devices. The real labor saving devices, dishwasher, clothes washer, refrigerator etc. were/are very meaningful but haven't moved much in the last 20 years. Education, housing, food, clothing, etc. are far more important and relevant to what it means to live a decent life in the 21st century.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tom_mellior 7y ago
I agree that you don't need a TV and I don't have one either. But other people keep buying them anyway, so it makes sense to include them in a statistical measure of average households.

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Which is why they are added when new and expensive - it flatters the real inflation measures and saves governments money longer term.

lonelappde 7y ago

This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology. This is a very confused comment. The part that's coherent enough to clearly identify what is wrong is that it refers to “fiscal policy” when it means “monetary policy”, which is the policy targeted at particular inflation rates. But even aside from that, the whole claim is incoherent.
- mindslight 7y ago
  The comment may be poorly worded, but the point is sound. Every bit of technological progress or economic optimization should result in naturally decreasing prices, just as we've come to expect in the technology sector. This goes for both offshoring in general as well as Walmart's replacement of locally-run businesses. Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor. But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time".
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Every bit of technological progress or economic optimization should result in naturally decreasing prices Not in dollar terms, especially when dollars are being deliverately managed so that the dollar cost of a labor hour increases over time. In terms of labor-hours, sure. > Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor. No, lower nominal (dollar) prices would not. Lower real prices are an incoherent concept. Lower labor-hour-equivalent prices would if and only if lower labor demand meant equal employment but reduced hours, otherwise it would just exacerbate the tangible inequality resulting from reduced labor demand. > But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time". But, it's not: that's not what targeting low positive inflation is. That would only be the overt policy if there was an overt policy to reatrict real wage gains. While I do think (at least large portions of) one of the two major parties is actively and deliberately pursuing policies with that goal, it's very much not an overt policy.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      > Not in dollar terms, especially when dollars are being deliverately managed so that the dollar cost of a labor hour increases over time. This is sophomoric relativism - achieving lower day-to-day prices is exactly how market competition works. It's tautological to justify a policy of changing the value of a dollar by rejecting analysis in terms of an unchanged dollar. When creating a new variable, you have to analyze it in terms of existing variables. > lower nominal (dollar) prices would not [help make up for the reduced demand for labor] It very clearly would if businesses said "we're going to reduce everyone's hours by 20%" while everyone's expenses went down 20% - everyone's budget would remain the same. I'll give you that this won't happen so pleasantly uniformly. But posit E who remains employed, and U who is laid off. If the expenses of four such E's go down, they now have extra money to spend locally to create a new job for U. Whereas if the E's expenses remain the same, then U's only options to get money are to head towards where it is being printed or compete with the E's in a race to the bottom (which is why the price of easily-interchangeable labor is now set by "minimum wage" rather than the market). > that's not what targeting low positive inflation is. An explicit goal of inflationary monetary policy is to drive "full employment". So yes, pushing everyone to keep working full time is one of its overt goals. A goal that is regressive in the face of needing ever-less labor. I'm obviously not going to convince you on the merits of this, especially in a few comments, and that's fine. It's just fundamentally dishonest to discard a political viewpoint by condescending from a paradigm that rules out said political viewpoint by construction.