[beezle]

My mid-80s starting salary out of college with a BA was $25K - pretty good at the time and order $70K today. That $3K in the 80s would be 1/8th of my annual salary. Most people would consider that a very large expenditure and not something they could find digging under the couch cushions and breaking piggy banks.

[VLM]

I don't disagree with any of that, none the less, they were selling at $3K then and have to cut price to $300 to sell now, so people are obviously 10x poorer now than in the 80s. Can't argue with actual historical economic activity.

Its worth pointing out that I was paying something ridiculous like $115 for health insurance around 1990 and its running about $1750 now for my wife and I, and that's with horrifying copays and stuff. Somebody with $70K is still getting $70K, they're just spending it on rent and medical expenses now instead of $3K hard drives.

On one hand, instead of life involving $3K hard drives, now we supposedly have better medical care and nicer houses. On the other hand, its not like lifespans are increasing, LOL.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> they were selling at $3K then and have to cut price to $300 to sell now, so people are obviously 10x poorer now than in the 80s

Can you explain this? I don’t understand your reasoning. Doesn’t the issue of “cheaper to manufacture” have anything to do with price?

[notahacker]

It's entirely due to cost of manufacture (and the result that hard drives are mass market product with a lot of competiton)

Here's a brand new sedan you could buy for under $5k during the same period. https://blog.consumerguide.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/20...

The sort of person that could afford to plonk $3k a few megabytes of storage without thinking about it too hard back then wasn't the sort of person that needs a payment plan to afford an iPhone today, it's the sort of person who's never needed to save for a new car.