The average middle class citizen have access to luxuries unheard of even for kings and queen ages ago.
What is luxury very often become the masses' necessity through free maket process.
Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#22The fact that 50% of people still believe things like a TV, Microwave, and central A/C are "necessities" means we have a very long way to go. I guess I can be happy it dropped from 60%.
Please live in Tucson in July. :) I would give up Internet before I gave up A/C. I've only seen one home in Tucson well enough insulated to give up A/C, and it was built, brick by brick by the owners, and only had two very small windows.
Maybe construction techniques appropriate to local conditions are more of a necessity than AC? There are plenty of places where people have survived in similar conditions for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to AC.
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#23Given how correlated these trends are, I am not sure what is changing is the desire for any particular item, but the actual interpretation of the word "necessity". I suspect what is happening is that when financial security is low, necessity is applied as a term close to its actual definition, whereas in times of financial plenty it starts wandering up the scale towards "want". That said, I boggle at the clothes drye…
> I boggle at the clothes dryer rank Some American towns actually forbid residents from hanging clotheslines.
But you can hang them inside.
We don't have a clothes dryer and the weather here is generally wetter than the clothes are. We just have two drying racks. Works perfectly for a two-person house hold. I don't think it's hard to scale up for more persons.
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please live in Tucson in July. :) I would give up Internet before I gave up A/C. I've only seen one home in Tucson well enough insulated to give up A/C, and it was built, brick by brick by the owners, and only had two very small windows.
Maybe construction techniques appropriate to local conditions are more of a necessity than AC? There are plenty of places where people have survived in similar conditions for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to AC.
Of the many ways that people handled heat before AC [1], most involved thicker walls and living underground. Air Conditioning has allowed the use of modern building materials (drywall & studs, rather than poured concrete or bricks), and therefore greatly accelerated the growth of home ownership.
As with everything, there are pros and cons--cheap electricity has simply led to the use of AC rather than natural cooling.
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#25Slightly off topic, but related none-the-less: something that has always bothered me about "necessities" is that 99% of US households have a TV [1] but at the same time, ~12% are in poverty. [2] How do "necessities" like this tie into poverty? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
Spending priorities don't just stop with TV (which is probably the least offender since they can be relatively cheap).
I could drive around neighborhoods in Detroit (as far back as pre-2000) and see a lot of people with houses that were falling apart from disrepair, but they have a decked-out car with gold rims and hydraulics in the driveway... Or the ricers that can only afford a Ford Escort, but add some huge spoiler to it... People spending mounds of money on things that don't matter that much isn't something new.
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever lived in the south? A/C is very much a necessity.
Yet people did it. My parents grew up in St. Louis without air conditioning. It gets uncomfortable but is not unlivable. People live in the tropics without it. It is not a necessity.
> Yet people did it. My parents grew up in St. Louis without air conditioning.
In the past, people were allowed to sweat (and smell of sweat.)
Re: Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
#27Slightly off topic, but related none-the-less: something that has always bothered me about "necessities" is that 99% of US households have a TV [1] but at the same time, ~12% are in poverty. [2] How do "necessities" like this tie into poverty? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
Read the book Bowling Alone.
If you are poor, TV is probably the only entertainment you can afford. America has lost or greatly diminished almost all its local communities. A poor person without television would need a lot of other local poor people without televisions to start recreating a community where people do things with each other.
(Nobody say "library". I love libraries, but in low-income neighborhoods they're usually less common and less well-stocked. If you can even afford to get there and back.)