[alex43578]

Is the implicit expectation that people making something should have some correlation with their ability to buy that thing?

The assembly-worker making a Civic and a 7 Series BMW are doing effectively the same thing, but the BMW assembler shouldn’t be getting paid 3 to 4x.

[MarkusQ]

The reference to Marx and (implicitly) the labor theory of value renders the GP unserious. Just looking at the people doing the assembly (and not all the people in the supply chain), ignoring the time aspect (I doubt there's any product that costs more than one of the people assembling it would expect to make over the time it would take them to single-handedly create the product from scratch), and so on.

It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more.

[ben_w]

> It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more.

It may be so, but those feelings are part of the disconnect and they themselves cause all sorts of problems - or benefits, if directed appropriately, e.g. the IKEA effect is part of the same thing: we put in effort so we think the result is worth that effort.

Marx being wrong doesn't mean trade unions didn't rise for much of the 20th century on the basis of similar feelings, being in error didn't stop the USSR being one of the world's two superpowers for about half a century.

If the employees are satisfied their labours will bear fruits then they historically have not minded much that billionaires skim the cream; but when they are not satisfied, revolutions come. Those are messy and unpleasant, but they come anyway.

[MarkusQ]

Sure. Lying to people and telling them they're somehow oppressed just because other people are more successful than they are can be used to stir up a revolution and get a lot of the useful idiots killed.

That's why it's important to call the nonsense out.

[ben_w]

When someone's making billions and the goods and services they get you to pay are functionally mandatory even if theoretically avoidable, with costs going up because someone somewhere has apparently cornered the market, is it even a lie?

People asking "Why can't I afford a car from 9 months salary when my dad could? Why is a house 10x my salary not 3x like my dad's? Why can't my partner and I afford kids even on two incomes when our parents managed it on one?" don't want a series of ten hour-long degree-level lectures on economic theory to be able to understand the real answer, especially not when there's clearly a bunch of very rich people who keep loudly telling them that they ought to be happy because some stock index has gone up (when they don't own stocks) or that they've moved up the value chain (which if true doesn't answer why cars and houses are less affordable).

Give them an answer about Baumol's cost disease (easy to understand without much economics study), and suddenly you're back to Marxism but with different language, where Marx's "means of production" happen to be inalienable to the human form (or at least have been so far, plumbers are not yet quaking in terror at the videos of androids falling over while attempting to open a dishwasher).

[MarkusQ]

Being untrue is what makes these things lies[1][2].

Arguing that they are emotionally compelling is just confirming that they're manipulative lies.

[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation [2] https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-have-inflation-ad...

[ben_w]

Counterpoint for [1], that is claiming $15k in 1947 is $76,801.50 today. Here's a quote from Wikipedia about a 1948 luxury brand car model:

  The Cadillac Series 62 Coupe de Ville was introduced late in the 1949 model year.[4][9] Along with the Buick Roadmaster Riviera, and the Oldsmobile 98 Holiday, it was among the first pillarless hardtop coupes ever produced.[4][9] At $3,496 ($47,306 in 2025 dollars [5]) it was only a dollar less than the Series 62 convertible, and like the convertible, it came with power windows standard. It was luxuriously trimmed, with leather upholstery and chrome 'bows' in the headliner to simulate the ribs of a convertible top.[4][9]

And yes, I did check Wikipedia's references, it's page 115: https://archive.org/details/standardcatalogo00beve/page/114/...

And from the same source, the 1946 Crosley sedan was $905, three digits. (Page 813).

From your own [1], "Cars priced at $3,496 in 1949→$15,003.75 in 2026", and "Cars priced at $905 in 1947→$4,633.69 in 2026". The prices your [1] link give for 2026 sound like the price of new Chinese cars before tariffs, which Americans can't buy. And yes, I also noticed that $3,496 (1949) becoming $15k (2026) according to your link is completely out of sync with the number Wikipedia gave (Wikipedia agrees with https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm which says the $905 (1946) Crosley sedan would cost $13,899.66 in 2026, where is 2026's new car for $14k? Oh, right, they're in China and just about here in Europe), which is my next counterpoint:

Counterpoint for [2], inflation is not one number for all things: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-8...

This matters because of all the debate about which goods and services go into the basket of goods that is used to measure inflation, and that the headline number is generally wrong in both directions at the same time once you look at subgroups who are more and less dependent on different goods and services.

This also means that as groups stop buying certain things, they move out of those baskets fractionally or entirely. Like, fewer kids being born means less spending on childcare means it's weighted less in the basket, even if the reason for fewer kids is more expensive childcare.

For more about how the headline number hides the details, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU2raZftgmE&t=601s