You should probably stop being a loser louse as a lifelong endeavor.

You wouldnt understand the market if it cockslapped you.

Do you imagine that would make a big difference? Do you think a/c ownership has crashed in the last 10 years?
There isn't an overabundance of readily available super-up-to-date information on the topic from the current year out there.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Aug 5 2017 07:43pm

The poor had greater access to healthcare then, but you're right, everything can be boiled down to a few luxuries.

Ignored.



Yeah...A/C sales have gone up. Too many old folks were dying in the summer.
This ofc, has nothing to do with the economy.

You DO see that graph is made of...dots. Like one for every quarter in the year..maybe more.


There is a book from about 50 years ago titled: How to Lie With Statistics.

I'm not saying YOU are lying. But statistics, graphs, etc., are fairly malleable. When we find such things we have to consider the source and we have to consider who is benefiting by said facts. THEN we can, by reading very carefully between the lines, possibly glean a tiny bit of information from them. Even then we have to remember that we might not have thought of ALL the participants that are in fact benefiting by the said....facts.


So many times in my life, I've taken "easily found" information as truth, only to find out years later... how much more effort I should have spent on determining the validity of said information.


/e Yes, A/C sales have gone up. However the price for A/C has more than doubled in 15 years. Not to mention the costs of electricity, installation etc.

This post was edited by Ghot on Aug 5 2017 08:10pm

Yes sometimes statistics can be used misleadingly and graphs can be deceptive.
Do you have any reason to believe that is the case here? Do you contest the point they are illustrating?
Or are they accurately portraying a fairly obvious trend over the past 30 years that supports my point?

Well for example, I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, in the 60's and the 70's. Your top graph seems to be accurate. But then again, we didn't need A/C in the 70's like we do today.
Today, this exact same geographic location, is like Biloxi Mississippi. Way too hot, and way too humid.

Also, A/C has become, since the 70's much cheaper to manufacture. Many townhouses that were new, and had A/C in each unit, are now old and falling apart and being given over to low income housing.

All these things make the graph that shows the "households with A/C", appear in a different light. In other words, the graph, while it may be accurate...means nothing when taken out of all these other contexts.
But it damn sure comes in handy for a politician who wants folks to think that things are just getting so much better.

Our methods of getting food, appliances, houses, etc., to the consumer are 100's of times better, just in my lifetime. It should be far cheaper to accomplish these things these days. It isn't, and that's including: "allowing for inflation".


/e Maybe there's an easier way to make my poinht.


In 1965 a brand new Mustang with all the frills, was 2000 - 2300 USD.
Find a couple inflation calculators and take the average. How many 2017 dollars would say... 2300 1965 dollars be?

THEN, see if you could buy a 2017 tricked out Mustang with those 2017 dollars.


THEN you will know how the economy is really doing.

This post was edited by Ghot on Aug 5 2017 08:36pm

This is a direct result of the welfare state.

Education, health care, etc. price increases over time. The advances in technology helped in some fields like HVAC, but other fields stagnated and even regressed, esp health care.

The artificial demand created by the welfare state bumraped the natural pricing mechanism of the market and lowered the standard of living. Ironically this hurt the poor the most.

I can explain this in more detail if desired.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Aug 6 2017 05:04am

I dunno, I think we're a little bit past the times of...

"If you can't keep up (for w/e reason) then we will leave you out at night for the tigers".



On the other hand, there are solutions to keep some from abusing the system. Like men and women who keep having kids, even though they can't support them. Maybe the surgical time release birth control solution or some such.
Just because we have a welfare system, doesn't mean we have to ignore the abuses.

Thats a stupid strawman argument. Literally noone starves in America anymore.

In the past you just asked your neighbors for help. If your neighbors hate you then maybe you deserve it.

Well yeah, because we have a welfare system. Before we had a welfare system, lots of people did starve.

/e Or at least die due to complications, from chronic hunger.

This post was edited by Ghot on Aug 6 2017 06:45am