[adam_patarino]

I can’t help but notice the items of increasing price / cost are not optional / discretionary purchases. Price can increase and not affect demand. Whereas the items decreasing in price are all subject intense competition and price sensitivity.

[hibikir]

That's not how it works: Most things that people call non-discretionary still have opportunities for market effects. Take food: You might have spikes for, say, beef, but what is necessary is just enough calories, not necessarily having them come from beef. Therefore, you can switch preferences, eat something else, and not be affected by the price increases. Poeple rarely do though, because the amount of money spent on food is significantly lower than historical, precisely due to agricultural productivity improvements. In the US, we also have to consider the effects of recent tariffs: When supply gets far more expensive, prices go up in a market, regardless of whether people must eat or not.

For housing, there's also significant location effects: One doesn't have to live in, say, Manhattan. People trade time for location, and then select the space they want. A whole lot of the space Americans use is completely optional. Go look at cities in Asia, or in Spain: You can have a city with an average density similar to NYC's Upper East side, but not even NYC comes close. That's not about a limitation of supply, but very specific policy choices.

It's similar in other mandatory things: In healthcare, the amount of things that are actually mandatory isn't that large, training to become a doctor is offered to far fewer people that would want the job, drugs can be handed long monopolies... It's not about non-discretionary, but mostly a regulatory problem. Same with American colleges, which waste an order of magnitude more money in what is shaped like an old luxury good. Anyone that has gone to a public university in continental Europe and to a US college can tell you it's a completely different good, and the American approach isn't all that focused on efficient education, as it's still shaped like a finishing school. And again, it's not necessary.

So I'd argue it's almost always regulation written to help certain incumbents, instead of inability of market forces to keep prices low even when it appears that a good is non-discretionary.

[adam_patarino]

Yeah you’re right, that’s fair. I just think people don’t behave that rationally. I’m not moving away from my kid’s grandparents because my local costs have gone up, for example.

There exists greater friction with many of the items in red than the highly automated ones.

My question is how linked is this friction to the lack of automation?

With text books and meat packing there are few players due to consolidation. This means they can avoid investing in automation and keep prices high because they face less resistance from consumers and virtually none from competitors.

In short I’m asking if market forces are to blame for lower automation. And therefore automation is not the root cause of price increases.

[zeroonetwothree]

At some price level you would move. Of course there are probably many more people that would move before you so that situation may not arise in practice. Economics works on the margin.

[adam_patarino]

Sure but there’s a significant change in price that I can withstand before moving. My point is there’s less price sensitivity for some of these items. And because of that I wonder if that affects the amount of automation suppliers invest in.

[jdasdf]

>I’m not moving away from my kid’s grandparents because my local costs have gone up, for example.

If you're unable to eat because you spent all your resources paying for that residence near the grandparents you would certainly move.

[cal_dent]

I'd tend to disagree on the point around housing. I'd be surprised if there isnt a non-insignificant # of households who would happily move to lower cost of living areas (rent/house price wise) or areas with more nature perhaps but that is simply not feasible because there is no work there or the fields they work in are tethered to a particular city or cities in general. That severely limits their concept of choice in the matter.

[kmeisthax]

College is optional. Actually, if you're just looking for "a skilled job" trade school is a better bet than college now. But the only people actually saying that are conservative nut-jobs trying to fight a culture war against a balanced education. People send their kids to colleges for the same reason why they demand more car lanes instead of better buses and trains: it's a status symbol.

The thing about status symbols is that you are buying them to feel better than someone else. So they almost have to be scarce - and therefore expensive. That's the basic idea behind cost disease; scarce things in an economy of abundance become more expensive, not less.

[adam_patarino]

Perhaps it is optional for some. The point isn’t if it’s technically required. It’s that these items have less price sensitivity, which could be a greater factor in what industries invest in automation.

[SubmarineClub]

> Actually, if you're just looking for "a skilled job" trade school is a better bet than college now.

Better for whom? And better in what sense?

Long-term, on average, post-college careers still blow the trades out of the water in earnings.

In my case certainly, if I had bought into the “trades are better!!” online rhetoric I would be making far less money than I am now, and I get to work remote.

[kmeisthax]

> Long-term, on average, post-college careers still blow the trades out of the water in earnings.

That average has a lot of outliers. There are a handful of degrees which almost guarantee you gainful employment. Like, someone getting a law degree or prepping for hospital residency will make waaay more money than maths, liberal arts, or anything on PhD track. The latter do not have anywhere close to the same job prospects.

Furthermore, some degrees are extremely expensive to get. My guess is you got an engineering or CS degree, which in terms of "degrees with job prospects" are still reasonably priced. You can graduate and go into the work force with little debt (or at least, I did, YMMV). Less so for the lawyers and doctors pushing up the college average, who have to go to more expensive schools and even more expensive post-graduate programs. They rack up lots of student debt in the process. Even if it gives you a higher salary, you might not be comfortable with a decade and change of debt slavery.

[ghaff]

Law in the US is actually not that great an overall profession in terms of compensation if you're not talking top schools, white shoe firms, and a prestigious clerkship.