7 ms·

Maybe the stuff we want to buy has gotten increasingly expensive. College, phone and internet, all on a stagnating wage.

• mahyarm 12y ago
  Depends on the place. Phone & internet is not it, but college, rent, cars & health care are.
  • bjelkeman-again 12y ago
    Collage, rent, cars and healthcare take up an awful lot of the available income for most people, so if these are more expensive then that accounts for a lot.
  • stanmancan 12y ago
    I guess it does depend highly on lcoation. I live in Vancouver, Canada. For my fiancee and I, our cell phone bill comes to about $150/m and internet is $40. That alone is $1,200 a year. Cars are another expense that's gone up substantially over the last 20 years. We pay $140/m in insurance and at $1.40/L gas, at least $150/m in gas. That's $3,500 a year not including servicing (minimum $100 every ~3 months) or car payments ($280/m). All in, just owning a car costs us about $7,200 a year.
    • jarek 12y ago
      A year ago in Vancouver, I was paying $28 a month for cell, $30 for wired broadband internet, and $81 for a transit pass ($91 now). But if you want to spend a lot of money, cars and Canadian telecoms definitely make it easy.
      • stanmancan 12y ago
        Transit is alright in Vancouver, but not sufficient for a small family. I live in North Delta and work downtown Vancouver. I have a 7 year old daughter that needs to be dropped off at school, and picked up from her Grandma's in Surrey. I also coach her soccer team and play myself. For the individual transit alone is typically sufficient, but as soon as you have certain responsibilities a car quickly moves into the 'necessity' column.
        • jarek 12y ago
          > but as soon as you have certain responsibilities True, kids in suburbs aren't cheap
• taber 12y ago
  Can somebody explain why this was downvoted? It may be based on false assumptions, but at least commenting moves the conversation forward.
  • ericras 12y ago
    Not really increasingly expensive. For example, a TV is actually a lot cheaper (not to mention better) than it used to be. We have/want more stuff then people in the past. Houses are larger. Families have more cars, more clothes, more toys, etc. Plus things that didn't exist like cell phones and internet access.
    • toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Exactly. The work week hasn't dropped because people have chosen (poorly, but that's just my opinion) to have more "stuff" than free/leisure time.
    • VLM 12y ago
      That's a macro vs micro problem. On a macro level it doesn't matter how many greenbacks or grams of gold or seashells or BTC are in play, the median dude is going to, almost by definition, live in the median house, and his extractable wealth by definition will become the median price. The median of whatever China decides to ship to us, will by definition, be the median quality TV and be sold at the median price. Either sell at that price or throw away profit or stuff warehouse with unsold merchandise. Its the same effect as .gov donating money for day care or housing or schooling has no direct effect on rates... all it does is make the item more expensive. I guess one way of putting it is you can't expect people to be richer if you do give all of them more money (aka inflation).
      • marcosdumay 12y ago
        > the median dude is going to, almost by definition, live in the median house That's somewhat true (but you can improve the quality of the median house, just can't improve size). > The median of whatever China decides to ship to us, will by definition, be the median quality TV and be sold at the median price. But that's not true. Buyers decide the median quality of TVs, not sellers. And TVs can be so cheap that everybody only buy the most expensive one, and still it makes no impact on their budget. Every physical good is exclusive to some degree, but that degree varies wildily.