Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Get Them Made Like They Used To

You can still buy a 1950s-style toaster that will have a 1950s-style toaster function and lifetime. 

It's just that $22 in 1950s dollars is $320 in 2022 dollars. Each 2022 dollar is worth nearly seven cents in 1950. 


I believe you can still get 1950s fridges as well, it's just that you're looking at around $6000. 


Almost all these "productivity" improvement have in fact been cutting corners. Wheat costs 11 pence a bushel, and a real toaster still costs $22. The price of money has changed, so this is less obvious than it should be.

4 comments:

Arqiduka said...

So, the "they don't make them like they used to" crowd is just paternalists, decrying that cheap options are at all available? Either that or wages have not kept up with the '50s.

Alrenous said...

They know damn fine wages haven't kept up, but to hide this they pretend the $20 2022 toaster is somehow equivalent to the $20 1950s toaster. It's just the damn kids these days being lazy, see?

If wages haven't kept up, they would have a responsibility. They would have to do something about it. Can't let your kids live a worse life than you, especially not so politicians can afford more private plane trips to Davos. But they're peasants; responsibility is anathema to them. They know, better than anyone, they're not going to do anything. Hence they must have no responsibility, which means nothing must have gone wrong.

See? Perfectly logical.

Parisian said...

I wonder if I ought to quickly try to sell my 50s fridge before making an offer to the landlord about selling my apt. right, for which I could get big money if I play it right, because he is renovating this into a luxury building and cannot throw me out by law. I know, I know what you think about such laws, but I'm not going to pretend I don't live where I live and don't even feel that that makes me narcissistic (although I am not at all convinced you know what one is---there are bountiful examples of why you don't, and it's not worth arguing about.)

Yes, I hadn't thought of that, and I ought, because there are bound to people who want a half broken-down fridge (the shelf holders have had to be bolstered), so I'll ask around, but don't worry, not you, you would probably hope I didn't sell it or make anything off the apartment. I am trying to catch up with some of your things, and I even saw "non-Amish Christians". Well, there's one thing to be said about that. Nobody is going to argue with you your formulations condemning everyone else, but you should be glad it's "worth about a billion dollars" because there's clearly no way you're going to budge, and just do math and physics with people you don't take seriously as people...or that's how curmudgeonly abd hateful it comes across. What is Socrates? An honorary Amish?

By the way, I don't think the current "anonymous" is Amish, and I know Nick Land isn't. Did it ever occur to you that people may well have the right not to admire Amish as much as they do lasusannois, who live in "the perfect country" (I agree with that, as you know.)

Okay, I know I don't have to come here, but this time around, no matter how short, I KNOW you are fucked up about some very obvious things. I did before, but I"M the SOCIAL SORT which you look down on, and something in Socrates or just living the billion-dollar Amish life has given you a false sense of superiority (not the true one, which actually is real, and I've often praised you for, just as I'd praise anyone with a magnificent gift, including myself)

Okay, so you think everything Amish is greater and purer than EVERYTHING in the rest of the world cultures.

Don't pretend you've made yourself clear on this. You have merely boasted about yourself (impolite in the usual sense, especially in how often you like to do it) and also actually PROCLAIMED that Amish Culture is the greatest of all human cultures. No, I don't buy it an nobody non-Amish does either. Who, by the way, as you well know, are not encouraged to do higher education and their "going away into the world" had better be quick. Okay, if I read the wrong sources, so what. It's still a closed world that doesn't welcome people outside it, and I was thoroughly surprised to read that even one actually wanted to "become Amish". I'd rather even stay an inner-city "cosmopolitan" (which you say means "narcissist", but one quits caring what you think at a certain point, since it's you who determines who is worth living or dying.)

Parisian said...

i hadn't thought of selling my 50s fridge for decent money before I sell my apt. rights for possibly big money because I find myself stuck in the trendiest neighbourhood in New York. And I didn't plan it that way either, this neighbourhood used to be the "coolest", it wasn't the "West Village", it was still mostly "Greenwich Village", and all I know of that died out with Covid (there was a Spanish resto across the street from me that had kept it's 60s menu all through the decades that finally couldn't make it. You're saying all these things about value, probably true, in any case I don't know how to know, I just listen...but that restaurant was unique with not only never changing its decor, but mainly never changing its superb menu--Chicken Bordelaise, Fish in Sherry Sauce, amazing Paella, even a dessert made of only Ice Cream and Creme de Menthe which I always got.