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by throwaway4aday 1255 days ago
It adheres to the definition. The problem with the phrasing is that nearly all people in America and many other countries are inundated with luxury items to the point where we view them as basic necessities. That doesn't make them necessities, they are still lifestyle choices that while more affordable than ever are still superfluous to our existence.

In other words, we're all spoiled brats ;)

1 comments

At least in Germany you get a Smartphone for way less than 100€ and a call + SMS + 4GB data flat for 5€. If that is luxury what is going to the cinema for 20€ (movie and popcorn) for 2 hours?
I never bought a smartphone for myself, but I've seen 100 EUR smarthpones, and what you get is just a toy (unless you want to do your banking or login to e-mail on a Linux device with severely outdated kernel and no OS updates, which can't go for a few minutes without phoning home, wherever that is)

More expensive ones are not significantly better, either, unless you pick a brand known for keeping up with security updates.

5 EUR per month for service? That is crazy cheap in a highly developed country. Which provider?
Although I do not live there, I have a SIM card from Italy (Fastweb) which for 6€ lets me have 50GB Internet (of which 6GB could be roaming in the rest of Europe), 100 sms and unlimited calls.
In the UK I get a sim-only deal with unlimited calls and 4GB of data for £6 with Smarty: https://smarty.co.uk/plans/4gb-data

Recently moved and didn't have internet service setup yet. I got an unlimited data bundle from them for £17 for 30 days. Felt like a pretty good deal, and it didn't get throttled at all. Latency was a slight issue with zoom calls though.

You don't get that consistently. You can go to check24.de and get their sim.de offer for 5gb data and sms/telephone flat, but that's a limited time deal. So technically yes, but in general you are more in the 8-10€ ballpark for this kind of offering.
winsim.de gets you this all the time. They just call it temporary like these permanent going out of business sales.

I get 15gb for 10€ from them.

I am in France paying 5€ per month to red-by-sfr for 20Go and illimited call/SMS/MMS