17 ms·

Experiences are expensive. Things are cheap(er). A medium-quality dinner for two in an expensive city costs 100$. A beautiful kitchen knife costs about that m

Experiences are expensive. Things are cheap(er). A medium-quality dinner for two in an expensive city costs 100$. A beautiful kitchen knife costs about that much, but lasts 20 years. A Broadway musical for a family of 4 costs about 800$. A good mattress costs about that much, but lasts for 20 years. The given wisdom seems to be that we should value experiences more than things. Good things also cause small dose of repeated joyful experiences. I am 50 years old, and live a reasonably opulent, upper-middle class, big city life. I am guessing here - all the items in my apartment put together, is probably worth 6 months of my work. A bargain, compared to the joy they give me.

dangus 3y ago
Respectfully, this doesn't have much relevance to the fact that basic necessities like rent and food are significantly more expensive than they were just two years ago. Housing, transportation, and food account for over 60% of all spending. Experienes and goods aren't my problem. My problem is that my dwelling costs $500 a month more than it did in 2021 and I live in the exact same place, and I haven't gotten a raise. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf
- lucaspm98 3y ago
  On a personal level I feel the same strains, but all sources I’m finding have median wages rising more than median rent since 2020 and certainly since 2021. However, that would not be true for buying a home especially when factoring in borrowing costs. https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...
  - yterdy 3y ago
    That's because rents temporarily cratered when people couldn't move due to lockdowns. But that was monthly, during the latter half of 2020 and the early half of 2021. Moving season is early summer, so people were locked into leases until prices rose again. Then, those leases were hiked in a massive price-fixing scheme, I mean raised in observance of inflation.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > basic necessities like [...] food are significantly more expensive than they were just two years ago. Here on the farm, the price I'm getting when selling food is half of it was two years ago. If I, the farmer, am selling the food for less than two years ago, while you are paying more than two years ago, then it seems experiences are you problem – e.g. you are paying more for the experience of shopping in a grocery store.
  - raincole 3y ago
    ... people didn't shop in a grocery store two years ago?
    - randomdata 3y ago
      People seemingly value the experience of shopping in a grocery store more now than two years ago.
      - hattmall 3y ago
        What is the reasonable and less expensive alternative to shopping in a grocery store though?
        randomdata 3y ago
        If your time is worthless, the least expensive option will be to produce your own food. If your time has value, the least expensive option will be to buy from a commercial kitchen. What is reasonable is subjective and depends on the experience you want to have. If you enjoy cooking as a hobby and are able to afford the high cost of operating your own kitchen, then that will be the only reasonable choice in your mind, and in that case the grocery store will provide a pretty nice experience in simulating wholesale distribution in quantities the hobbyist can manage. A number of reports suggest that commercial kitchen use is on the decline, so, assuming people aren't eating less, it seems that cooking is gaining in interest as a hobby. Thus it stands to reason that the grocery store can charge that elevated interest more than in times past. That's just basic supply and demand.
- thebigman433 3y ago
  Not to put any blame on you or anything, because rents are crazy, but median wages have risen pretty significantly over the last few years. You definitely should be looking for a raise, or a new place of work.
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    If both prices and wages have risen than it means you have inflation.
    - thebigman433 3y ago
      Yes? Everyone knows there was more inflation than usual. It has literally dominated headlines for the last year and a half.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    If the only way for people to keep apace of rising costs is to get a new job, that's got to be massively disruptive to businesses.
- hibikir 3y ago
  Housing is an auction, and a bet on how well the area is going to do. If you live in a place that has very high demand, prices are going to go up if there's no building being done. But it's not all rising prices: My house's value hasn't outpaced inflation through the last 20 years, because it's in the wrong part of St Louis. People with blue collar occupations have no problem buying around me: You can buy a 4 bedroom house for under 300k, and their salaries have gone up far more than the price of the houses. So house pricing problems? Just localized regulatory problems. We'd have a much smaller problem if more metro areas were attractive to people, instead of having such a big separation between of winners and losers.
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    Who do you think are the winners, and who do you think are losers. You can buy in the wrong part of a city but you will pay much less. Who wins, people who pay less or people who pay less? I think it depends on what they are after.
  - dangus 3y ago
    There is a documented housing supply shortage on a national level. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/homes/housing-shortage/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/homes/housing-shortage/index.... Plus, mortgage rates are set at a national level. Your house price went up dramatically in the last two years even though the purchase price didn’t increase because someone new to the neighborhood has to pay a higher monthly payment to buy. I would argue that the amount of homes that lost value enough to fully compensate the rapid increase in interest rates is going to be extremely low, even in towns and neighborhoods facing rapid decline. It’s also the case that more metro areas grew than declined: https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-fastest-growing-and-shrinking-metro-areas-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-fastest-growing-... In other words, pick any random person in the US and it’s more likely than not that they live somewhere that is growing.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    >Housing is an auction Between the recent (nationwide) realtor fee debacle and RealPage et al.'s (multi-state) price-fixing, it's probably more accurate to say that housing is a (national) grift.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  That's probably true for Bezos, too. Except that he got a raise.
strken 3y ago
Taking a couple of tennis balls to the local park and throwing them with your kids costs about $5, depending on how many you lose. Going for a run along the beach costs a bus fare. You can camp on the weekend for an initial outlay of a few hundred dollars of secondhand gear plus perhaps $40 a trip. Having everyone bring a plate for a potluck dinner costs slightly more than you'd normally spend for a meal. I think experiences can be as cheap or as expensive as you like. Essentials are the crux of the article, and without essentials most experiences are harder.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stevage 3y ago
  Those things aren't what are meant by "paying for an experience". They're paying for the ingredients and DIY the experience.
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    I'm not really sure I see the difference. The point is the experience and how much it costs, whether or not you pay that cost financially or through DIY. And as the previous poster points out, you can get great and life-changing experiences for very little money. I think what's interesting here is that that's not so true for things. For example, I'm looking into custom ergo keyboards at the moment, and there's lots of off-the-shelf options, but there's also lots of DIY options where you print and solder lots of parts yourself. DIY keyboards tend to be cheaper, but not usually by very much, because fundamentally, the cost of the product is driven by the cost of its constituent parts. Fundamentally, both things and experiences are driven by supply and demand. Rare experiences that have a low supply but high demand are naturally going to be expensive, just like rare or hard-to-manufacture things. Experiences that can be found everywhere - like throwing a ball around with friends or family - are cheap, just like many common things are. That said, my intuition would be that the cheapest experiences are pretty much always cheaper than the cheapest things, and the most expensive things (e.g. one-of-a-kind art, rare objects, etc) are generally more expensive than the most expensive experiences.
merek 3y ago
> all the items in my apartment put together, is probably worth 6 months of my work Is that after tax? I'm refurbishing and trying to define a budget.
j7ake 3y ago
To be more precise : wages in big cities are high. Most “things” are made in low cost of living / low wage areas. Therefore, paying a local to cook for you is expensive. Buying a kitchen knife made by someone in a low cost of living area is cheap. This also means that buying a custom knife handmade by a local artisan in your city will be expensive.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  What you say is that bigger cities have bigger inflation. If you live in a smaller city, earn half, but everything costs half, then, you don't have any incentive to move to a big city.
  - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
    2x salary, 2x costs, 2x savings. The savings are far greater if they compound in investments, and if you're remitting income to someone who lives in the lower cost of living area, it can be worth it.
    - DeathArrow 3y ago
      2x savings does not matter if you have 2x prices.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - citrin_ru 3y ago
        I does matter if you plan to move to a cheaper area after a retirement. Or even if you are buying a car which costs about the same from California to Virginia - only local goods/services (and housing of course) are more expensive in high cost high salary places. Everything else if about the same within a given country.
        DeathArrow 3y ago
charlie0 3y ago
This is true in the US, but the opposite was true abroad. Which is I prefer to spend on experiences abroad. Here in the US, experiences are very expensive. Going to a spa for a few hours, $300 to $500+. Buying the things they use at the spa, it's like $60.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  Eating at a restaurant, going on a cruise or going to spa are not experiences I care about. Spending time with your loved ones, spending time with friends, going outside and walking, reading a book are experiences that I care more about, and they don't cost much, if anything. Some people living in poor countries report that they are happier than people living in rich countries. Why is that? Because they have better experiences.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    That and because people in those countries still value the little things a lot, things we in rich coubtries, unfortunately, take for granted.
  - gizmondo 3y ago
    > Some people living in poor countries report that they are happier than people living in rich countries. Why is that? My guess would be the hedonic treadmill, some people just have a higher baseline level of happiness.
    - argentinian 3y ago
      Do you mean they become unable to enjoy good time with friends?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Spending time with your loved ones, spending time with friends, going outside and walking, reading a book are experiences that I care more about, and they don't cost much, if anything. oh, it really depends on the loved one. Hanging out but BYOB? Well, that's $20 a case or so, and you probably bring a few varieties. Cooking or ordering out also incurs some cost on someone. house hangouts are "free" (I won't nitpick on rent), but there's not really any third places these days to really hang out otherwise. You got a park and maybe a dying mall. The natural terrain from there really shapes how much "experience" you can get without someone nickle-and-diming you. And ofc books vary: my "reading" right now is on game animation and that was a book I paid $100 for or so a few years back. Worth every penny, but not really "cheap" by any metric. >Why is that? Because they have better experiences definitely true. experiences vary on your environment, and when there isn't much business to make (for obvious reaons in such a country) you will have more natural experiences. I do yearn somewhat for that, but it again stems down to the dwindling third place; there isn't a "town circle" in many places in the US, which I imagine is a more common aspect of such 3rd world countries.
DeathArrow 3y ago
>Experiences are expensive. Things are cheap(er). Some experiences are expensive, some are free. Things are never free. Why are things expensive? Because everyone will charge you the most they can get away with. Part because of supply and demand, part because they use your desires against you, part because they have to be profitable.
- frenchman99 3y ago
  well, no, there are a lot of places where you can get used things (or sometimes even new) for free that still in good condition
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    Not where I live.
    - frenchman99 3y ago
      Where's that? I live in France.
      - DeathArrow 3y ago
        I live in Romania.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  Sure, but if prices rise high enough, that high demand induces more suppliers of those services. In cities, where rent is 3-5x that of rural areas, new suppliers cannot enter the market to provide more of that service unless it involves wages high enough to pay for rent. There is a finite amount of space in a city, especially those as extremely zoning-constrained as American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect This "everyone will charge you the most they can get away with" doesn't always have to mean prices go parabolic forever; we can enact simple urban land use reforms that allows more housing units and commercial spaces to be built, which can reduce the price of rent for businesses and the rent of housing units that businesses pay indirectly via wages.
about3fitty 3y ago
In San Francisco, these numbers are wildly cheaper than the reality. Except a broadway musical.
faeriechangling 3y ago
Things alone will leave most entertained and lonely.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Depends which 'things'. I cook every day and do the grocery shopping. Average food prices have gone up 2x - 3x over the last two years. Probably not for the typical HN crowd, but for many people food is a substantial part of the monthly family budget.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Average food prices most certainly have not done that.
kbenson 3y ago
> A Broadway musical for a family of 4 costs about 800$. A good mattress costs about that much, but lasts for 20 years. Am I the only one that read that and thought "Since when does a mattress last 20 years?" That certainly doesn't match my experience, even for mattresses much more expensive than that.
- nly 3y ago
  Definitely can last 10-15
- paulddraper 3y ago
  I certainly don't have the same mattress as I did in 2003.
- switch007 3y ago
  Not sure about the US but that price and statement might have been true 15-20 years ago in the UK. These days a high quality handmade king size mattress of natural materials starts closer to £2,500 and might have a guarantee of 10 years. I’m lying on a small, high quality mattress purchase 6 years ago for £1,100 from a small boutique business and it started to dip in the middle a bit about 2 years ago but I think it’s got a 2 or 3 more years life left in it. £630 ($800) will get you a very cheap mattress today and if it’s both comfortable and lasts 20 years that’ll be like winning the lottery
  - georgesimon 3y ago
    Depends on which part of the UK. In Northern Ireland you can still get delivery and installation of a Respa bed and mattress-for-life, plus collection and recycling of old mattress all for easily under £1000. I think they're sold under the Silentnight brand in GB[0]. Why do you want all(?) natural materials, that doesn't sound hygienic for something you want to have for more than 10 years? [0] Not all Silentnight would be Respa though, as far as I know.
  - pinkgolem 3y ago
    To be fair there are 2 markets by now One with in-store shopping & the above mentioned high prices(and 600 is rather on the low side there) But quit a lot of the mattresses winning the usual testing reports here are around 200€(single 80x200) to 550€(200x220) for a bigger one Only available online but with nice return terms
oldpersonintx 3y ago
[dead]
api 3y ago
It’s the big three: real estate, tuition, and health care. Real estate is the biggest and most pervasive problem as it affects the most people. Younger generations are wealthier in terms of almost everything but these three things whose cost growth has greatly exceeded inflation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand in those areas.
Ekaros 3y ago
On other hand "experience things" are pretty cheap. Specially in second-hand market. Second-hand books can be very cheap, same goes for music in form of CDs, or movies as DVDs. Or you can rent them pretty cheap. And even new ones are pretty cheap. So if experience is mass produced as item it can be very cheap too.
GuB-42 3y ago
The idea with "buy experiences, not things" is that things often come with upkeep costs, even if it is just a spot to store them. A knife needs cleaning and sharpening, a mattress takes a lot of space, needs clean sheets, etc... And your examples are somewhat biased in that they are things you need anyways. You can't really live without a mattress and some kind of knife. The question is more about what to do with your disposable income. Do you buy a thing you don't really need or an experience you don't really need. The reason to favor experiences it that they don't come with upkeep costs.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Do you buy a thing you don't really need or an experience you don't really need. The reason to favor experiences it that they don't come with upkeep costs On the flip side, I regularly sell the things I don't need anymore. I can't sell my experiences, can I? The other thing you appear to be missing is that there are few experiences you really need, while there are many things you really need, so any comparison of expenses to things is going to be comparing an unnecessary experience to a necessary thing.
cynicalsecurity 3y ago
> The given wisdom seems to be that we should value experiences more than things. It's not. It's just it's easier and cheeper to produce things nowadays than experiences, thanks to the industrial revolution. It hasn't been like this in the past. People valued things much more.
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]
yterdy 3y ago
>I am 50 years old, and live a reasonably opulent, upper-middle class, big city life. This indicates to me that you don't actually know the price of anything, particularly post-pandemic. E.g., a middle-of-the-road mattress costs $800. A good one sets you back 2 grand.

dangus 3y ago

Respectfully, this doesn't have much relevance to the fact that basic necessities like rent and food are significantly more expensive than they were just two years ago. Housing, transportation, and food account for over 60% of all spending. Experienes and goods aren't my problem. My problem is that my dwelling costs $500 a month more than it did in 2021 and I live in the exact same place, and I haven't gotten a raise. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf

lucaspm98 3y ago
On a personal level I feel the same strains, but all sources I’m finding have median wages rising more than median rent since 2020 and certainly since 2021. However, that would not be true for buying a home especially when factoring in borrowing costs. https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...
- yterdy 3y ago
  That's because rents temporarily cratered when people couldn't move due to lockdowns. But that was monthly, during the latter half of 2020 and the early half of 2021. Moving season is early summer, so people were locked into leases until prices rose again. Then, those leases were hiked in a massive price-fixing scheme, I mean raised in observance of inflation.
randomdata 3y ago
> basic necessities like [...] food are significantly more expensive than they were just two years ago. Here on the farm, the price I'm getting when selling food is half of it was two years ago. If I, the farmer, am selling the food for less than two years ago, while you are paying more than two years ago, then it seems experiences are you problem – e.g. you are paying more for the experience of shopping in a grocery store.
- raincole 3y ago
  ... people didn't shop in a grocery store two years ago?
  - randomdata 3y ago
    People seemingly value the experience of shopping in a grocery store more now than two years ago.
    - hattmall 3y ago
      What is the reasonable and less expensive alternative to shopping in a grocery store though?
      - randomdata 3y ago
        If your time is worthless, the least expensive option will be to produce your own food. If your time has value, the least expensive option will be to buy from a commercial kitchen. What is reasonable is subjective and depends on the experience you want to have. If you enjoy cooking as a hobby and are able to afford the high cost of operating your own kitchen, then that will be the only reasonable choice in your mind, and in that case the grocery store will provide a pretty nice experience in simulating wholesale distribution in quantities the hobbyist can manage. A number of reports suggest that commercial kitchen use is on the decline, so, assuming people aren't eating less, it seems that cooking is gaining in interest as a hobby. Thus it stands to reason that the grocery store can charge that elevated interest more than in times past. That's just basic supply and demand.
thebigman433 3y ago
Not to put any blame on you or anything, because rents are crazy, but median wages have risen pretty significantly over the last few years. You definitely should be looking for a raise, or a new place of work.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  If both prices and wages have risen than it means you have inflation.
  - thebigman433 3y ago
    Yes? Everyone knows there was more inflation than usual. It has literally dominated headlines for the last year and a half.
- yterdy 3y ago
  If the only way for people to keep apace of rising costs is to get a new job, that's got to be massively disruptive to businesses.
hibikir 3y ago
Housing is an auction, and a bet on how well the area is going to do. If you live in a place that has very high demand, prices are going to go up if there's no building being done. But it's not all rising prices: My house's value hasn't outpaced inflation through the last 20 years, because it's in the wrong part of St Louis. People with blue collar occupations have no problem buying around me: You can buy a 4 bedroom house for under 300k, and their salaries have gone up far more than the price of the houses. So house pricing problems? Just localized regulatory problems. We'd have a much smaller problem if more metro areas were attractive to people, instead of having such a big separation between of winners and losers.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  Who do you think are the winners, and who do you think are losers. You can buy in the wrong part of a city but you will pay much less. Who wins, people who pay less or people who pay less? I think it depends on what they are after.
- dangus 3y ago
  There is a documented housing supply shortage on a national level. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/homes/housing-shortage/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/homes/housing-shortage/index.... Plus, mortgage rates are set at a national level. Your house price went up dramatically in the last two years even though the purchase price didn’t increase because someone new to the neighborhood has to pay a higher monthly payment to buy. I would argue that the amount of homes that lost value enough to fully compensate the rapid increase in interest rates is going to be extremely low, even in towns and neighborhoods facing rapid decline. It’s also the case that more metro areas grew than declined: https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-fastest-growing-and-shrinking-metro-areas-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/2020-census-fastest-growing-... In other words, pick any random person in the US and it’s more likely than not that they live somewhere that is growing.
- yterdy 3y ago
  >Housing is an auction Between the recent (nationwide) realtor fee debacle and RealPage et al.'s (multi-state) price-fixing, it's probably more accurate to say that housing is a (national) grift.
DeathArrow 3y ago
That's probably true for Bezos, too. Except that he got a raise.

strken 3y ago

Taking a couple of tennis balls to the local park and throwing them with your kids costs about $5, depending on how many you lose. Going for a run along the beach costs a bus fare. You can camp on the weekend for an initial outlay of a few hundred dollars of secondhand gear plus perhaps $40 a trip. Having everyone bring a plate for a potluck dinner costs slightly more than you'd normally spend for a meal. I think experiences can be as cheap or as expensive as you like. Essentials are the crux of the article, and without essentials most experiences are harder.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stevage 3y ago
Those things aren't what are meant by "paying for an experience". They're paying for the ingredients and DIY the experience.
- MrJohz 3y ago
  I'm not really sure I see the difference. The point is the experience and how much it costs, whether or not you pay that cost financially or through DIY. And as the previous poster points out, you can get great and life-changing experiences for very little money. I think what's interesting here is that that's not so true for things. For example, I'm looking into custom ergo keyboards at the moment, and there's lots of off-the-shelf options, but there's also lots of DIY options where you print and solder lots of parts yourself. DIY keyboards tend to be cheaper, but not usually by very much, because fundamentally, the cost of the product is driven by the cost of its constituent parts. Fundamentally, both things and experiences are driven by supply and demand. Rare experiences that have a low supply but high demand are naturally going to be expensive, just like rare or hard-to-manufacture things. Experiences that can be found everywhere - like throwing a ball around with friends or family - are cheap, just like many common things are. That said, my intuition would be that the cheapest experiences are pretty much always cheaper than the cheapest things, and the most expensive things (e.g. one-of-a-kind art, rare objects, etc) are generally more expensive than the most expensive experiences.

merek 3y ago

> all the items in my apartment put together, is probably worth 6 months of my work Is that after tax? I'm refurbishing and trying to define a budget.

j7ake 3y ago

To be more precise : wages in big cities are high. Most “things” are made in low cost of living / low wage areas. Therefore, paying a local to cook for you is expensive. Buying a kitchen knife made by someone in a low cost of living area is cheap. This also means that buying a custom knife handmade by a local artisan in your city will be expensive.

DeathArrow 3y ago
What you say is that bigger cities have bigger inflation. If you live in a smaller city, earn half, but everything costs half, then, you don't have any incentive to move to a big city.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  2x salary, 2x costs, 2x savings. The savings are far greater if they compound in investments, and if you're remitting income to someone who lives in the lower cost of living area, it can be worth it.
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    2x savings does not matter if you have 2x prices.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - citrin_ru 3y ago
      I does matter if you plan to move to a cheaper area after a retirement. Or even if you are buying a car which costs about the same from California to Virginia - only local goods/services (and housing of course) are more expensive in high cost high salary places. Everything else if about the same within a given country.
      - DeathArrow 3y ago

charlie0 3y ago

This is true in the US, but the opposite was true abroad. Which is I prefer to spend on experiences abroad. Here in the US, experiences are very expensive. Going to a spa for a few hours, $300 to $500+. Buying the things they use at the spa, it's like $60.

DeathArrow 3y ago
Eating at a restaurant, going on a cruise or going to spa are not experiences I care about. Spending time with your loved ones, spending time with friends, going outside and walking, reading a book are experiences that I care more about, and they don't cost much, if anything. Some people living in poor countries report that they are happier than people living in rich countries. Why is that? Because they have better experiences.
- hef19898 3y ago
  That and because people in those countries still value the little things a lot, things we in rich coubtries, unfortunately, take for granted.
- gizmondo 3y ago
  > Some people living in poor countries report that they are happier than people living in rich countries. Why is that? My guess would be the hedonic treadmill, some people just have a higher baseline level of happiness.
  - argentinian 3y ago
    Do you mean they become unable to enjoy good time with friends?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Spending time with your loved ones, spending time with friends, going outside and walking, reading a book are experiences that I care more about, and they don't cost much, if anything. oh, it really depends on the loved one. Hanging out but BYOB? Well, that's $20 a case or so, and you probably bring a few varieties. Cooking or ordering out also incurs some cost on someone. house hangouts are "free" (I won't nitpick on rent), but there's not really any third places these days to really hang out otherwise. You got a park and maybe a dying mall. The natural terrain from there really shapes how much "experience" you can get without someone nickle-and-diming you. And ofc books vary: my "reading" right now is on game animation and that was a book I paid $100 for or so a few years back. Worth every penny, but not really "cheap" by any metric. >Why is that? Because they have better experiences definitely true. experiences vary on your environment, and when there isn't much business to make (for obvious reaons in such a country) you will have more natural experiences. I do yearn somewhat for that, but it again stems down to the dwindling third place; there isn't a "town circle" in many places in the US, which I imagine is a more common aspect of such 3rd world countries.

DeathArrow 3y ago

>Experiences are expensive. Things are cheap(er). Some experiences are expensive, some are free. Things are never free. Why are things expensive? Because everyone will charge you the most they can get away with. Part because of supply and demand, part because they use your desires against you, part because they have to be profitable.

frenchman99 3y ago
well, no, there are a lot of places where you can get used things (or sometimes even new) for free that still in good condition
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  Not where I live.
  - frenchman99 3y ago
    Where's that? I live in France.
    - DeathArrow 3y ago
      I live in Romania.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
ZoomerCretin 3y ago
Sure, but if prices rise high enough, that high demand induces more suppliers of those services. In cities, where rent is 3-5x that of rural areas, new suppliers cannot enter the market to provide more of that service unless it involves wages high enough to pay for rent. There is a finite amount of space in a city, especially those as extremely zoning-constrained as American cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect This "everyone will charge you the most they can get away with" doesn't always have to mean prices go parabolic forever; we can enact simple urban land use reforms that allows more housing units and commercial spaces to be built, which can reduce the price of rent for businesses and the rent of housing units that businesses pay indirectly via wages.

about3fitty 3y ago

In San Francisco, these numbers are wildly cheaper than the reality. Except a broadway musical.

faeriechangling 3y ago

Things alone will leave most entertained and lonely.

PeterStuer 3y ago

Depends which 'things'. I cook every day and do the grocery shopping. Average food prices have gone up 2x - 3x over the last two years. Probably not for the typical HN crowd, but for many people food is a substantial part of the monthly family budget.

Dylan16807 3y ago
Average food prices most certainly have not done that.

kbenson 3y ago

> A Broadway musical for a family of 4 costs about 800$. A good mattress costs about that much, but lasts for 20 years. Am I the only one that read that and thought "Since when does a mattress last 20 years?" That certainly doesn't match my experience, even for mattresses much more expensive than that.

nly 3y ago
Definitely can last 10-15
paulddraper 3y ago
I certainly don't have the same mattress as I did in 2003.
switch007 3y ago
Not sure about the US but that price and statement might have been true 15-20 years ago in the UK. These days a high quality handmade king size mattress of natural materials starts closer to £2,500 and might have a guarantee of 10 years. I’m lying on a small, high quality mattress purchase 6 years ago for £1,100 from a small boutique business and it started to dip in the middle a bit about 2 years ago but I think it’s got a 2 or 3 more years life left in it. £630 ($800) will get you a very cheap mattress today and if it’s both comfortable and lasts 20 years that’ll be like winning the lottery
- georgesimon 3y ago
  Depends on which part of the UK. In Northern Ireland you can still get delivery and installation of a Respa bed and mattress-for-life, plus collection and recycling of old mattress all for easily under £1000. I think they're sold under the Silentnight brand in GB[0]. Why do you want all(?) natural materials, that doesn't sound hygienic for something you want to have for more than 10 years? [0] Not all Silentnight would be Respa though, as far as I know.
- pinkgolem 3y ago
  To be fair there are 2 markets by now One with in-store shopping & the above mentioned high prices(and 600 is rather on the low side there) But quit a lot of the mattresses winning the usual testing reports here are around 200€(single 80x200) to 550€(200x220) for a bigger one Only available online but with nice return terms

oldpersonintx 3y ago

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api 3y ago

It’s the big three: real estate, tuition, and health care. Real estate is the biggest and most pervasive problem as it affects the most people. Younger generations are wealthier in terms of almost everything but these three things whose cost growth has greatly exceeded inflation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand in those areas.

Ekaros 3y ago

On other hand "experience things" are pretty cheap. Specially in second-hand market. Second-hand books can be very cheap, same goes for music in form of CDs, or movies as DVDs. Or you can rent them pretty cheap. And even new ones are pretty cheap. So if experience is mass produced as item it can be very cheap too.

GuB-42 3y ago

The idea with "buy experiences, not things" is that things often come with upkeep costs, even if it is just a spot to store them. A knife needs cleaning and sharpening, a mattress takes a lot of space, needs clean sheets, etc... And your examples are somewhat biased in that they are things you need anyways. You can't really live without a mattress and some kind of knife. The question is more about what to do with your disposable income. Do you buy a thing you don't really need or an experience you don't really need. The reason to favor experiences it that they don't come with upkeep costs.

lelanthran 3y ago
> Do you buy a thing you don't really need or an experience you don't really need. The reason to favor experiences it that they don't come with upkeep costs On the flip side, I regularly sell the things I don't need anymore. I can't sell my experiences, can I? The other thing you appear to be missing is that there are few experiences you really need, while there are many things you really need, so any comparison of expenses to things is going to be comparing an unnecessary experience to a necessary thing.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago

> The given wisdom seems to be that we should value experiences more than things. It's not. It's just it's easier and cheeper to produce things nowadays than experiences, thanks to the industrial revolution. It hasn't been like this in the past. People valued things much more.

daniel-cussen 3y ago

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yterdy 3y ago

>I am 50 years old, and live a reasonably opulent, upper-middle class, big city life. This indicates to me that you don't actually know the price of anything, particularly post-pandemic. E.g., a middle-of-the-road mattress costs $800. A good one sets you back 2 grand.