On Monday, October 14, 2013 7:56:37 PM UTC-4, N8N wrote:
On Saturday, October 12, 2013 11:15:48 PM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
According to the Carpe Diem site one had to work 885 hours in 1959
to earn the same goods as one can earn working 170 hours in 2013.
More he http://tinyurl.com/lrq8suo
One would work about 28 hours to buy a gas stove in 2013 compared to
almost 91 hours in 1959. He has ten other examples of decreasing work
hours needed to buy given items.
But, to use that example... how long will the 2013 gas stove be usefully serviceable relative to the 1958 gas stove? Gotta consider the whole life cycle. I really would like to know if this is just a mistaken impression or able to be supported by statistics, but it seems that a lot of new products are made simply cheaper, not necessarily less expensively. I hope I'm wrong.
nate
Valid points. I think you're right, that many things don't last
as long as they used to. But it's even more complicated than just
making them cheaper so they don't last. In the case of a stove,
how long would most customers want a stove to last? The 1950
stove might have lasted 30 or 40 years. But today appliance styles,
features, colors, etc change. So I don't think many people would
want a stove to last that long, nor would they be willing to pay
extra to have it last that long, especially on a lower end one
that costs $400. Even if it lasts 10 years, it's just $40 a
year and then you have a brand new looking new stove again.
Even if the super stove lasted 30 years, it's gonna look like
hell by then.
On the other hand, it seems a common complaint here that furnaces
for example, HVAC stuff instead of lasting 25 to 30 years, only
lasts 15 now. But maybe that isn't entirely bad either. If you shelled
out extra money in 1985 for an HVAC that would last 30 years
was that such a good thing? That furnace was less than 80% efficient
and now you have furnaces that are 95%, two stage, etc.
AC was less than 10 SEER, now you have 14. So, it's really a more
complex problem.