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Things, including economic things, always change over time. The mix of goods and services that we produce will change, and prices with them. Many things will ge

Things, including economic things, always change over time. The mix of goods and services that we produce will change, and prices with them. Many things will get more expensive or become unavailable, while other things will get cheaper and more plentiful. And new things will be invented. Televisions and microwaves are cheaper now. Intuitively I would have thought cars are cheaper too - but a moment of research indicated they're actually more expensive. Food and energy have become much cheaper as well. (Talking about over decades) It's very easy to cherry-pick any one thing to focus on and say "Look how bad/good it is now." - but that doesn't make it meaningful or right to do so.

strix_varius 4y ago
> Intuitively I would have thought cars are cheaper too - but a moment of research indicated they're actually more expensive. This surprised me so I looked into it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity#Statistics - in 1960 a car's lifetime was about 100k miles, while today it's about 200k. https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60scars.html https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60scars.html https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38748092/new-car-average-sale-prices-47100/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38748092/new-car-average-... - in 1960 the average new car cost $2,752 ($26,100 in 2022 dollars) - in 2022 the average new car costs $47,000 So in 1960 you'd pay about 26100/100000 = $0.26 / mile, whereas in 2022 you'd pay about $0.24 / mile. There'd also be qualitative differences in the experience like performance, comfort, safety, entertainment, etc. On the whole it's not a lot cheaper (somewhere around 8%), but it turns out our intuitions were correct.