
Originally Posted by
Hmac
No you don't. We're not talking about different levels of sophisticated air bags, we're talking about the presence of air bags or not. It doesnt make sense to say that entry level then = entry level now when the govt has imposed so many additional expensive components that werent even conceived of then, and all of which cost money that isnt part of the natural market evolution of that particular manufactured item. And then to compare it to a completely non-manufactured item like a tax stamp and what it represents....apples just do not equal oranges.
Yes, you do. You compare the entry level car of today with the entry level car of yesteryear. Likewise, midrange to midrange, and high end to high end. The exact outfitting is irrelevant. New technology means that today's cars may have totally different stuff on them, but technology also drives costs down so what was once though exotic is now commonplace.
To go back to the computer example: when the CDROM first came out, it was very expensive and only high end computers had them. My first CDROM was an external SCSI unit that cost around $450 and was a 1x or 2x reader. And I was not on the cutting edge of adoption.
Now, if you even still have a CDROM, it is a $5 part to the manufacturer, if that. And a $12 part to the end user.
The point was to show that CPI was not a great measure of the real inflation of prices. Not to compare cars to tax stamps.
And speaking of apples and oranges...you want to compare manufacturing costs and market forces of the auto industry to the computer industry....sorry, the argument just went beyond my ability to follow.
Not apples to oranges at all. The point is merely that what was once cutting edge becomes common place cheap through advances in technology, so you cannot say that the existence and use of a particular item back then equates at all to the same level of "luxury" today. Ie, having part X on a mid level car back then does not mean that a car today at the bottom of the bucket that also has the equivalent of part X is also a mid level car due to that part being affixed (air bag, stereo, fuel injection, or whatever)
The same dynamic happens in computers as it does in cars. New technology gets introduced at the high end and filters its way down to the low end over time so the fact that a low end car today also has that technology in it means that the car in the past was low end, or that a car with that technology was high end back then means that a car with that technology today is high end.
--
• formerly known as "eguns-com"
• M4Carbine required notice/disclaimer: I run eguns.com
•eguns.com has not been actively promoted in a long time though I still do Dillon special
orders, etc. and I have random left over inventory.
•"eguns.com" domain name for sale (not the webstore). Serious enquiries only.
Bookmarks