Re: Inflation & SF

Charlie Stross <charlie@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <holden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> declared:
>
> >
> > $2.25? Wow, I saw $2.39 today in California. Don't you live in the
> > land of cheap gasoline?

> Last time I filled up over here, it set me back 0.89 pounds per litre.
> Which works out at roughly US $6 per US gallon. (Down a dollar from its
> peak price. NB: here is the UK.)

Usually the price difference between California, People's Republic of
and Arizona, Land of Free, is much larger because of taxes. If I am
not mistaken, the difference between what I pay and what you pay is
for similar reasons.

> I think this question about inflation is somewhat bogus, because it
> tends to ignore the fact that we're living through a period of massive
> price *deflation* in consumer goods. Which has its own horrible
> problems, although they're less familiar to us because with the
> exception of Japan virtually none of the developed economies have
> suffered from deflation in the past half century.

I think that this was tagentially related the point of the original
poster. His example was cars. The price of a automobile has been
fixed or declined in constant dollars over the past, say, 30 years,
but the quality has gone up markedly. Cars last long and are safer.
On the local highway of death, there was a 12 car pileup including two
vehicles that flipped over. No one was killed. In fact, no one was
even seriously injured (try that in your 1965 Mustange.)

Most computations of inflation have some basket of commodities, but
they change them over time to reflect the average consumer's buying
habits. Hence, you would say, that they are somewhat misleading as,
basic stuff like unprocessed food, white goods, etc, have gotten much
cheaper while the basket of commodities used to gauge inflation now
contains stuff like TVs and such, which are not actually part of
the cost of living.

I think someone already mentioned _The Diamon Age_


>
>
> -- Charlie

--
Bradford Holden
"Decaf? Decaf is for children!" - Jim Thompson
.

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