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megaman821 3 hours ago

Some things yes and some things no. It is not and cut-and-dry as you think.

Look up the inflation adjust prices for a computer or a "big-screen" TV and realize almost no one pays anything near those prices for any consumer good. On the other hand there are a lot more people in the US and it is not like land is sprouting up from nowhere, so the price of land is a lot more.

Most things though fall into what people's personal preferences are. Cars have more luxury, house are bigger and have better finishes, movies are huge spectacles, one person can't watch 8 infants, you get more than an aspirin from formerly untreatable diseases; roll all this back and prices will drop.

ihumanable 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I find this graphic a good one https://www.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-chart-tracks-pric...

Obviously it's partial (or else there would be a billion lines) but it gives a good broad view of what things have gotten more or less expensive.

- TVs, toys, software, and cellphone services are cheaper.

- Clothing, funishings, and cars roughly flat.

- Healthcare, education, childcare, food, and housing are all more expensive by more than 50%.

So this is the moment we are in, we can certainly find things that were cheaper but your average consumer buys a TV once every few years, they buy food and pay for housing every day.

I don't think people are ignorant of the upsides of this deal, they are just capable of also recognizing the downsides.

megaman821 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Almost nothing can make labor-dominated services drop though. I guess you could have guest worker visas that pay half the going wage, and there would be a lot of people that take that deal, but most Americans would hate that.

Grocery inflation is not nearly as bad as the food inflation overall, which is driven by food-away-from-home just absolutely skyrocketing.

Billions of words have been spilled about housing, so I will boil it down simply. It is a mixture of policy and preference. It doesn't have to be the way it is, we just need to collective will to change things.