Inflation basically never goes in reverse to become deflation (you wouldn’t want it to anyway), so the sticker prices you see at the store will never go down (long-term). But when you account for inflation, cost of living has fallen before, and could fall again. People don’t notice it much but a lot of day-to-day goods we buy have gotten substantially cheaper over the last 40 years. The amount of a household’s budget that goes to food and clothing has gone down significantly since the mid 20th century. Minor luxuries like furniture and electronics have gotten much cheaper as well. TVs are the most notable example, they’re so cheap now that they’ve become disposable, the whole profession of “TV repairman” disappeared because it’s not even worth paying someone to fix a broken TV, you can just buy a new one for less than $100.
That’s all pretty nice, it’s just that all the savings we got from that was more than canceled out by the colossal rise in the prices of housing, healthcare, and college education.
Cost of living should never really go down but wages vs the cost of living should.
Bread used to be pennies for example and will likely never cost so little, but the average person makes in a month today is more than years back then too.
So prices should continue to rise but also wages. Unfortunately the wages part likely won’t happen without revolution or massive change in elections
The entire nineteenth century saw the cost of living go down due to the industrial revolution. Productivity soared and people got richer at a pace previously unmatched in history. They even saw the dreaded price deflation and yet it wasn’t the doom and gloom so many still believe it would be.
Imagine the horror of lower priced consumer goods. I shudder just thinking about it.
You can live in a different country. I’m not saying “if you don’t like it leave”. I’m just putting it out there as an option. If you can work some basic online job and earn USD but live in a cheaper country your gain a big advantage. I’m sitting at a restaurant in Thailand at the moment. My dinner and beer will total about $5. Been here 12 years now.
Historically we didn’t have these crazy levels of inflation.
In early novels people would be described via their salary. That amount of monthly income would be understood as being rich or poor for decades if not a century by readers. If an author wrote the guy made 20 thousand dollars per year, it’d be extremely confusing unless you knew the average wage for the decade.
20 thousand would be super comfortable in 1920, kinda poverty level by 1980
Most of the costs of living have gone done over the decades, it’s just that wages haven’t exactly kept up.
Electronics in particular have REALLY come down, a TV or telephone used to be a really big deal and nowadays you can have one in just about every room while every family member has a cell phone.
Cars are likely another big thing that have come down, you won’t find a sports car but a generic high efficiency commuter vehicle is fairly cheap compared to historically available vehicles; brand new Toyota Corolla is like 21k and can be had with like 10k and a pre-owned warranty for like 14k making them a very reliable and affordable first car.
The cost of housing is generally the only problematic bit (well medical too) as it seems to climb at a rate higher than any other cost of living improvements.
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