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On the car comparative. I have a 2010 RAV4, and my wife drives a 2023 RAV4. I love mine, but even if it was perfectly kept. It is smaller, lighter, it has less equipment, I have seen older RAV4s and they look even smaller than mine. What is is the opposite of shrinkflation ? I don't know if it is social pressures or what is is causing us to expect things that are bigger and more expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not adjusting for inflation makes it look completely stupid. There's one good effort - comparing a car to the salary of a car-worker. But it only has half the comparison (what are today's car workers earning?). That's the comparison that Marx would recognize: how long do the people making something have to work to buy the thing they made?
Will review the numbers this week and see how I can update all numbers to adjust for inflation while keeping the satirical angle
I'd paste the text, but you've somehow disabled select/copy/paste, UX strike number two.
Even with these cherry-picked examples, plug in how things actually were. That $8,200 station wagon with at 48 month loan and the terrible 80's loan rates of 10-12% would be like $750/month now. Most of those cars wouldn't make it to 50k miles without a major repair. There were almost no safety features, seat belts weren't required to be worn and you could drink and drive. This weird fetishization of the past is a me…
The problem is global. Any time you are told the problem is immigrants in your country or that your local politicians didn’t build enough housing - that’s not the root cause.
The root cause is the inevitable centralization of all wealth in corporations who can dodge taxes. This affords them the ability to accrue assets endlessly, buy politicians, achieve monopolies and bump up the prices.
There are 3 things that need to happen to restore the first frames: 1) some things like housing and healthcare must not be asset classes. It is unsustainable to demand profit growth year over year from either. 2) the wealth needs to be redistributed. It is a systemic risk for corporations and individuals to have accrued as much wealth and power as nations (and it doesn’t seem to be good for the mental health of those at the top) 3) we all need unions so workers can advocate for themselves and even the playing field. Including tech.
I’m not a communist, I think capitalism broadly works, but it requires regulation. We deregulated and it’s made a mess, we need to wind that back and patch the bad logic.
Pensions used to be free and great, until the company stole from the pension before they went bankrupt and you were left with nothing.
It makes no sense to give someone else control of your savings in this day and age.
Nice work please continue with this effort. On the car comparative. I have a 2010 RAV4, and my wife drives a 2023 RAV4. I love mine, but even if it was perfectly kept. It is smaller, lighter, it has less equipment, I have seen older RAV4s and they look even smaller than mine. What is is the opposite of shrinkflation ? I don't know if it is social pressures or what is is causing us to expect things that are bigger and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback. The whole experience/site is mainly satirical/humorous. It's not inflation adjusted cause I didn't want it turn into a finance piece tbh, but you're definitely right, if inflation adjusted most cards need to be re-built to account for inflation and better judge what we're getting today vs what we used to get
It's about money! How is it not a finance piece?
I'm pretty sure I did not get to keep my shoes on through TSA in 2004. It may not have been mandatory nation-wide until ~2006, but the origin is a 2001 incident.
Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples. Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today. There are certainly arguments to be mad…
Not adjusting for inflation makes it look completely stupid. There's one good effort - comparing a car to the salary of a car-worker. But it only has half the comparison (what are today's car workers earning?). That's the comparison that Marx would recognize: how long do the people making something have to work to buy the thing they made?
The assembly-worker making a Civic and a 7 Series BMW are doing effectively the same thing, but the BMW assembler shouldn’t be getting paid 3 to 4x.