Inflation of good with no matching inflation of pay.
Phone upgrades even though there’s barely any change from the last model.
Since 2018, the trend seemed to be going toward removing features instead… sd card slot, headphone jack, physical buttons, intrusions of screen space…
Been eyeing that (still on a 6 year old phone), actual compactness is one of the few things I’d be willing to sacrifice most of the smartphone things I like for.
Cars are a huge one. I know Lemmy is very radically against cars, but they are basically necessary for many (most?) Americans.
What is not necessary is the average price of a new car nearly doubling in 10 years. A $50k car should be a big luxury, not the fucking national average.
In order to afford a car that pricey, most people will have to severely compromise their savings, and/or get a loan that will last as long or longer than the car.
Cars have also become extremely reliable (in the EU at least) over the last ten years. Car companies have slowly convinced millions of people that leasing is the way to go, and nobody realised they were being sold a car on subscription lol
Then they have to give back a perfectly fine car with at least a decade of life left in it, and get hooked into another subscription
Fucking mugs tbh
See, that’s interesting because in America they seem to have gotten worse over the last decade or so. Domestic manufacturers have started designing things in an explicitly maintenance-hostile manner, even if they aren’t exactly less reliable.
I’m super interested if European cars are finally pulling it together. They’ve been an upkeep trap here for years due to the cost of maintenance and likelihood of problems.
I wouldn’t say that. In my experience even domestic cars are on average more reliable. BUT when they do break, it’s a fuck ton more expensive to repair anything. There is a genuine feeling of dread in newer-older vehicles because one part might require dismantling half the vehicle to get at, or that part is only available as part of a larger assembly.
Hmm, rapid price increases are consistent with inelastic demand, whereby sales remain high even in the face of rising prices. Why wouldn’t car manufacturers raise prices, if it doesn’t affect sales numbers? It’d be breach of fiduciary duty to the shareholders to do otherwise!
What could cause inelastic demand for cars? Making them basically necessary for most Americans, perhaps.
I have been thinking of getting a new car, but didn’t want to use the dealers finance system, so I went to the bank. Turns out, banks will only give auto loans if you’re buying a car that’s only 3 years old.
yeah right, since I can barely afford a new car, lemme just buy a BRAND fuckin NEW one. Nah, gimme that 2012 for 30k less thank you.
Cars have also ballooned in size since the 90s. In the 90s, sedans were the most common type of car. Now, it’s SUVs and light trucks, which use tons more materials.
True, but materials used did not double within 10 years, and materials are not the entirety of the cost of the car.
I’m not surprised they’re more expensive, I’m surprised that they’re so transparently being gouged. Like housing. And food. And gas.
Nevermind, I’m not surprised anymore.
Agreed. I think both are part of the picture. Consumers are buying the wrong kind of car (or manufacturers are selling the wrong type of car), too big and too inefficient, and there is price gouging, especially during the pandemic shortage. It’s telling that car prices were the fastest to come back down of almost any consumer category last year. Shows how much they could come down.
OP using word ‘convinced’ is relevant here because whilst most people in USA ‘need’ a car (because there is no practical alternative to driving), they are being convinced every day that a private car is the only viable solution to transport in general…
… and then of course you get everyone freaking out when someone has the audacity to suggest that installing a dedicated bike / bus lane would mean less people need a car, and that would save everyone time and money.
Also while I’m ranting, I’m so over people harping on about how they can’t rely on public transit and that’s why they need a car. Like reliable and affordable public transport is some magical and unobtainable goal.
But then when gas prices inevitably get crazy high, or they get in a wreck, or traffic is a mess then that’s just The Way It Is and in no way an indication that maybe everyone driving a personal car for every single trip isn’t the most reliable or sustainable way to run a city.
That last paragraph is the big thing I face most often. We got Amtrak service in my city and I hype that shit. I’ve talked to a bunch of people who are firmly anti-Amtrak because they caught one delay, but they’ll sit in daily interstate gridlock to go to work without batting a fuckin eye.
A thread on rising credit card debt in the US, combined with news of sustained spending levels and a rosy outlook on the economy at the surface got me thinking about this.
Recent trends that I thought of:
- Those “Pay over X months” schemes for smaller purchases than before.
- Tip amounts appearing in more places than they need to be, and increasing.
- Inflation of the prices of basic necessities and everything else
- Everything becoming a monthly subscription
- Deregulation of online gambling and related ads
I’m hoping for more recent trends and things I might not have considered like social media, but I also welcome personal experiences, expanding on any of the above and historical examples.
The subscriptions are out of control now. Sometimes we have to throw a tablet or phone at the kids, and of course they want the play the parts of the game they can’t click on because it’s locked. I have no problem shelling out something reasonable like $2-7 to just unlock all the crap and be done with it, but now most of these developers are asking for $10 a MONTH just to have access to all of the game assets. And they’re not live service games, have online, or even in-game currency; they just single player offline basic games like driving Thomas the tank engine around a map. Like, get fucked dudes.
Mobile games are so twisted and it’s plain to see.
You reminded me of this video, 20 minutes of the basis of how to psychologically manipulate people into spending money for your game. 3:45 is the “Hook, Habit Hobby” part which is worth a watch too. It’s from 7 years ago and elements of it may be beginning to crawl everywhere.
There are ads that portray people in humiliating situations, like not being able to afford their groceries while holding up the line at the checkout, so they download an app that gives them “free cash.” This is portrayed as a perfectly normal, reasonable thing to do in this situation.
Wow, that’s dehumanizing…
I’ve been behind people who used price match for every item in their cart. I try to smile politely and not look annoyed, people do what they need to to get by.
Yeah I’ve been the person who couldn’t pay too, and had to take items out
Those “Pay over X months” schemes for smaller purchases than before.
Some people don’t realize each one of those is a new line of credit…
You can fuck your credit up for a very long time messing around with those on stupid shit.
The scarier thing is that they are designed to be less than six months to avoid federal loan regulations and are reported to credit agencies as some new kind of installment loan (I forget the exact term/acronym). Many lenders are refusing to lend to anyone who has even taken one out in the past 2-3 years since they are seen as such a high risk indicator.
It’s not just one, it’s that credit checks are big factor in credit scores.
Normally you get an infinite amount in a 2 week period as one check for when you’re shopping around
If someone does one of these every other month, that’s 6 credit checks in a year. Even if you pay them all back asap, it fucks your credit up.
And it’ll show as an open line of credit on your report forever. Which is normally a good thing, but it brings your average credit per account down which hurts you further.
People do t know all that, and their fucking up their credit without knowing it. Then if they have to do a big loan for home/car/whatever, they get a worse rate
Buy now pay later schemes like Klarna.
You can spread the cost of a takeaway over 6 weeks. Wtf? If you can’t afford a takeaway make a fucking sandwich.
During the pandemic an old friend of mine and myself reconnected abd played video games together. He told me a couple of times that money is kinda tight and whatever. He worked way different shifts than me so i invited him to eat at my place 4 times a week or so. I love cooking and cooking double doesn’t really makes much of a difference. After a few weeks i was at his place for the first time ever and he had two full ass garbage bags full of delivery and fast food on his porch. Motherfucker that’s where your money goes. I can coock for the both of us a good healthy meal for a week for what he spends alone in two days. He basically said: well, i can’t cook, so there is nothing he can do, really. Wegot out of touch again, aside from talking on discord every bow and then, but i seen him recently and he’s almost doubled in size now, so i assume nothing has changed.
I don’t get people who say they “can’t cook”. Anyone can cook basic recipes…. No, the real issue is that they lack the willpower to cook. I say this as someone who dislikes cooking. I can do it if I need to (or rarely, if I feel inspired), and hell, I can do it well! But I detest the idea of spending like an hour cooking every day when I could just buy premade things like frozen meals or whatever and save myself the time. If my wife didn’t like cooking, that’s what I’d be doing for dinner each night (I already do it for lunch basically).
That’s sad. I don’t mind cooking, but after a typical work day, I often don’t have enough mental energy leftover to cook for myself either though. If I didn’t have a wife who loved me, I’d probably end up a lot like your friend. We try to save eating out for special occasions or when we’re both pooped and there’s no leftovers at least. But I can totally understand how that can happen to a person.
