Oh we're posting shorts now? I'm kidding. I was helping my mom get a new TV and had been eyeballing them myself as I prepare to move out next year and was surprised that you can get a 50in for a...
Oh we're posting shorts now?
I'm kidding. I was helping my mom get a new TV and had been eyeballing them myself as I prepare to move out next year and was surprised that you can get a 50in for a decent price for $220 (Visio, not top of the line in the US, but still, our last Visio lasted like 12 years).
I think it's more about the fact we're being squeezed for the necessities than the luxuries. Those are technologies that got cheaper, and are even bundled. CD Player, cellphone? Put your music on your iPhone.
But definitely, the squeeze is precisely on these necessities. My area's cheap rent is like $1700 a month, my complex has two apartments around $1850. I'm amazed people can afford it making less than I do.
Is our collective attention span slowly being destroyed? I think so? idk I was gonna say something but I can't remember what Anyhow—this guy or someone who looks like him has another video I've...
Is our collective attention span slowly being destroyed? I think so? idk I was gonna say something but I can't remember what
Anyhow—this guy or someone who looks like him has another video I've seen pointing out that, in the 90s, people (mostly yuppies) were paying $5 for Starbucks, on the reg, and the oldheads would tell them to stop wasting that income & they could buy a house/get a better apt/etc, and he did the math on a daily Starbucks habit vs rent @$500 or whatever; now that it's 2025 & Starbucks is... $5 but rent is $1.5-2K+, yeah you can't frugal your way out of that, so why bother. If I'm hoarding cash to maybe buy a house, one day, years from now, while housing is skyrocketing, but I can get board games & Legos instead for more money but comparatively affordably, yeah it makes sense. And the cutoff was so sharp! In the past five years the average mortgage payment has doubled or more. So I don't think it's been bad for long enough to tell yet what it will be like.
And this has a fatal effect on other businesses. We can't afford to spend $200-300 each, for a night out now, so we won't: we'll collectively spend $20-50 on that one boardgame we'll share and...
I can get board games & Legos instead for more money but comparatively affordably,
And this has a fatal effect on other businesses. We can't afford to spend $200-300 each, for a night out now, so we won't: we'll collectively spend $20-50 on that one boardgame we'll share and play for weeks.
Go out for movies, are you crazy? No, we'll sit at home and surf and high seas, maybe splurge on a package of microwave popcorn purchased at Costco for $2 each.
My group of friends used to do Dine out Vancouver where we'd each pay $50-100 per person for dinner at a nicer restaurant with a set menu. It's insanity in today's standards: we'll buy (not even that affordable) groceries and cook at home
★ You'd be one of my friends coming over to play the board game free ★ (but still, I hope things pick up soon) short answer: malls and shops are dying everywhere. except where they are somehow...
★ You'd be one of my friends coming over to play the board game free ★ (but still, I hope things pick up soon)
short answer: malls and shops are dying everywhere. except where they are somehow getting tax / govt subsidies / bread-scamming monopolies on groceries.
The crunch in residential rents hits commercial leases too. In a lot of big cities it’s very hard to start up a new business unless it gets super high revenues to be able to make the lease and pay...
The crunch in residential rents hits commercial leases too. In a lot of big cities it’s very hard to start up a new business unless it gets super high revenues to be able to make the lease and pay the staff enough to be able to afford to live near work. This basically means all you have are luxury boutiques, bars, and fancy restaurants. Greasy spoons can’t make it unless they own their building. Forget about low margin businesses that need a lot of floor space, like a neighborhood hardware store or a hobby shop.
This is part of why things like food trucks and delivery-only restaurants have become such a popular concept in the past few decades. The former can be located in the shittiest real estate...
This is part of why things like food trucks and delivery-only restaurants have become such a popular concept in the past few decades. The former can be located in the shittiest real estate imaginable without affecting business and the latter doesn’t require any land whatsoever.
This doesn’t really work for retail, though. The exceptions are businesses like Snap-On dealers, sort of, but because of their specific clientele I might consider them more to be a delivery company that carries their entire inventory with them.
My previous interactions with mechanics who are not using Snap-On lead me to believe that they might just be a cult. :P Seriously, though, I think that the thing that makes them special is that...
My previous interactions with mechanics who are not using Snap-On lead me to believe that they might just be a cult. :P
Seriously, though, I think that the thing that makes them special is that they're more of a tool service company than a retail operation. It seems in many cases that if a tool breaks they can just call their dealer and have a replacement for them pretty quickly instead of having to take a trip out to go get one. Especially because these days the tools sold in stores tend to be somewhere between "decent enough" and "one step away from a landfill".
Isn't that kind of the opposite of the premise of the video/thread? Going out to eat, or going to the movies is a luxury. Groceries are a necessity though.
Isn't that kind of the opposite of the premise of the video/thread?
Going out to eat, or going to the movies is a luxury. Groceries are a necessity though.
the video lists CD Player, TV, cell, computer, microwave as luxuries in the 80s. Let's try to talk about a night out. Going out for two people: dinner and movie, to see “Star Wars: Episode V- The...
the video lists CD Player, TV, cell, computer, microwave as luxuries in the 80s. Let's try to talk about a night out.
Going out for two people: dinner and movie, to see “Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back,” in 1980: $30.72 according to this list and $28.43 according to this list -- if we take $30, divide it by $200 rent, that's 15%, which is kind of expensive.
$30 in 1980 is worth $116.41 today. The second link has the price of a date in 2016 at $89.90, where moneygeek (aol) has it at $123 in 2024, depending on city. So in inflated adjusted price it's more money now.
BUT. the video/thread was talking about luxuries compared to housing cost. Remember it was 15% month's rent for a night out then. 123/2000 is 6%. So....it's more "affordable" to go out for a night, even though it's absolutely more than before, because of how ridiculously unaffordable rent has become. We're getting hosed from both ends.
I don't know how tinfoil hat worthy this is, but I also wonder if the rise of cheaper TVs is also funded by the rise of "smart" TVs who serve ads and harvest user data. I was at the electronics...
I don't know how tinfoil hat worthy this is, but I also wonder if the rise of cheaper TVs is also funded by the rise of "smart" TVs who serve ads and harvest user data.
I was at the electronics store here and saw large nice looking TVs were a lot more affordable than I thought but every single none them had some form of smart/ai element to it.
I know when we finally get a TV I'm either going to try and find a "dumb" TV or segment the TV in its own section of my network and then block it's traffic out. I have heard (can't remember where) that some TVs will hold your data and wait until an unsecure wifi network is available before phoning home with that data, but I'd need to double check that to make sure that is true.
Just feels like we're getting cool tech but with strings attached.
Eh. The major cost of a TV is the microchips and display, and both of those industries have become much, much more productive and efficient in the last quarter century.
Eh. The major cost of a TV is the microchips and display, and both of those industries have become much, much more productive and efficient in the last quarter century.
That's a good point, I partially take off my tinfoil hat. Economy of scales is a huge help in making consumer electronics available at a good price point.
That's a good point, I partially take off my tinfoil hat. Economy of scales is a huge help in making consumer electronics available at a good price point.
Economy of scale for LCDs (and soon LEDs) is ludicrous. They ship billions per quarter. I suspect smartphones in particular have made them cheap - not just because of their volume, but because of...
Economy of scale for LCDs (and soon LEDs) is ludicrous. They ship billions per quarter.
I suspect smartphones in particular have made them cheap - not just because of their volume, but because of their size and how that guarantees yields have low wastage.
See, the way LCDs work is you basically make a huge sheet of LCD (which will have dead pixels sprinkled randomly on it), then cut out any contiguous pieces of no-dead-pixel LCD, to make into a screen. Large screens obviously require you to be very lucky (since you need an unusually-long contiguous section without dead pixels) but if you're selling small screens you can just cut out multiple small screens from your failed almost-big-screen sections.
So selling lots of small screens reduces waste from making big screens, which makes them cheaper.
My bigger problem is that I can’t say “here’s $200 to make up for it, now give me control of my hardware” - because that would identify me as a more technical, less price conscious consumer, possibly even a business user, and if I’m in that bracket then there's a chance I could theoretically be coerced to pay a lot more than $200 extra. Paying anything less than a $2,000 markup is surely tantamount to stealing food off the plates of the poor Samsung CEO’s children.
Not sure about slightly downmarket brands like Vizio or TCL, but Samsung and LG TVs are still perfectly usable without being connected to the internet at all, and even support firmware updates via...
Not sure about slightly downmarket brands like Vizio or TCL, but Samsung and LG TVs are still perfectly usable without being connected to the internet at all, and even support firmware updates via USB.
Yeah, TV kept offline and a Pi or similar plugged in is definitely the way to go, but it does still annoy me that they've got to be fastidiously walled off from the network and supplemented with a...
Yeah, TV kept offline and a Pi or similar plugged in is definitely the way to go, but it does still annoy me that they've got to be fastidiously walled off from the network and supplemented with a secondary device.
Unfortunately, some of this is no longer true for many TVs, especially the cheaper models. They will actively seek out any unsecured access point or other internet connection and some come...
Unfortunately, some of this is no longer true for many TVs, especially the cheaper models. They will actively seek out any unsecured access point or other internet connection and some come "Bundled with Bullshit (tm)", so no internet means you will likely just see the same pre-loaded ads that will get less and less relevant.
I recently needed an inexpensive TV for our basement and I was able to find that Sceptre still sells affordable dumb TVs. It's no frills, but it has worked great. It was $150. I just looked on Amazon and it looks like they are no longer for sale, but it is unlikely that no one is selling them.
So this is a claim I've seen, but never seen strong evidence for. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because actual unsecured WiFi is borderline nonexistent in 2025. To reliably capture data...
They will actively seek out any unsecured access point
So this is a claim I've seen, but never seen strong evidence for. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because actual unsecured WiFi is borderline nonexistent in 2025. To reliably capture data from and serve ads to the small fraction of users trying to avoid exactly those things would require them to put in a cellular modem and establish deals with wireless carriers. Which is far from impossible, but it is a fair amount of additional investment for a pretty small ROI when the vast majority of people buying these things will just connect to their home WiFi without a second thought.
I have a Samsung in my bedroom and an LG in my living room, both only a couple years old. They both just act like dumb displays because they've never been connected to the internet. There aren't any ads, and I never even see their "smart TV" home screen because everything is controlled via HDMI CEC and I almost never even have to touch the remotes that came with the displays.
Of course, LG and Samsung exist upmarket of TCL and Vizio, so while "Smart TV" ad revenue may be factored into the price, I doubt either of them are relying exclusively on ads to turn a profit like Vizio.
My comment was more focused on the cheaper models you mentioned rather than LG or Samsung. LG and Samsung are almost certainly not relying heavily on ads (or more likely selling user data), but...
My comment was more focused on the cheaper models you mentioned rather than LG or Samsung. LG and Samsung are almost certainly not relying heavily on ads (or more likely selling user data), but Samsung was also one of the first TVs that I know of that put actual ads in the UI, not even on cheap models. I have two LG TVs, both purchased at the same time, and the larger higher end model was actually the one that got a firmware update that screamed "enshittification" where as the other one still lets me mostly just use it like a dumb TV. All of the TV OEMs that I know have started going down this dark path in the last year or so, previously Vizio was just a standout for user antagonism.
As far as evidence about TVs connecting to unsecured wifi, ironically the only incident that I have ever seen any purported proof was for a Samsung TV on their forums. I have also seen a few reports of Amazon Fire TV products doing it (which would not surprise me), but I didn't look further because I don't own any Amazon devices. I have seen an article on one of the TV OEMs filing a patent for using some sort of mesh protocol to try to reach out to the internet. I'm sorry that I do not have any direct links to give you better information on this. It is almost certainly not widespread, but what little trust I had in any of these manufacturers is gone so I do not believe they deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point.
Isn't that what all the cars do these days? Granted, those cost quite a bit more than TVs. I know I've heard of some cars displaying ads but I'm mostly paranoid about GPS tracking, remote vehicle...
To reliably capture data from and serve ads to the small fraction of users trying to avoid exactly those things would require them to put in a cellular modem and establish deals with wireless carriers.
Isn't that what all the cars do these days? Granted, those cost quite a bit more than TVs. I know I've heard of some cars displaying ads but I'm mostly paranoid about GPS tracking, remote vehicle disabling, and microphone listening. There hasn't been nearly enough reporting about this stuff, but the little I've seen has been extremely ominous.
Yeah, but they do it in cars because cars drive around. You can't rely on wifi for infotainment/navigation/remote control connectivity in the car. As you pointed out, it's one thing to pay for a...
Yeah, but they do it in cars because cars drive around. You can't rely on wifi for infotainment/navigation/remote control connectivity in the car. As you pointed out, it's one thing to pay for a perpetual 5g connection when you're selling a $70,000 car. It's an entirely different one when you're selling a $150 TV.
I have a Vizio and haven't had any issues from keeping it disconnected. Though I was flabbergasted when my mother-in-law babysat the kids one night and, after putting them to bed, took it upon...
I have a Vizio and haven't had any issues from keeping it disconnected. Though I was flabbergasted when my mother-in-law babysat the kids one night and, after putting them to bed, took it upon herself to connect the TV to wifi for me. Of course there's no option to remove that once it's set up! Thankfully I just blocked its MAC address at the router level but I was still pretty miffed for a while. Thankfully, I never once saw an ad pop up on there so I guess no damage was done.
Yes, the advertising and data collection is almost certainly subsidizing the costs. Vizio, for instance, had and article written about them years ago about how their advertising and data...
Yes, the advertising and data collection is almost certainly subsidizing the costs. Vizio, for instance, had and article written about them years ago about how their advertising and data collection operations were making more money than their TVs were.
The "they own a flat screen TV" is still thrown at low income families in an attempt to make them look like scroungers in the UK as if it's some high value crazy thing. It's weird.
The "they own a flat screen TV" is still thrown at low income families in an attempt to make them look like scroungers in the UK as if it's some high value crazy thing. It's weird.
When you're looking for a TV, have a look around at monitors as well. A while back, I got a very TV-like monitor (it even came with a remote!) for about the same price as an equivalent smart TV....
When you're looking for a TV, have a look around at monitors as well. A while back, I got a very TV-like monitor (it even came with a remote!) for about the same price as an equivalent smart TV.
You might also want to have a look at commercial displays. I found that these were more expensive for their feature set (aimed at businesses and designed to be very robust), but I still would have picked one over a smart TV.
I appreciate your tip! I'll need to see what size we end up going with, but I'm also guessing that this will be a year or two down the line before we start considering getting a TV.
I appreciate your tip! I'll need to see what size we end up going with, but I'm also guessing that this will be a year or two down the line before we start considering getting a TV.
Not tinfoil hat at all - absolutely correct. There are also deals in place with manufacturers as to what app store or streaming services are allowed to be 'compatible' with their smart TVs. Smart...
I don't know how tinfoil hat worthy this is, but I also wonder if the rise of cheaper TVs is also funded by the rise of "smart" TVs who serve ads and harvest user data.
Not tinfoil hat at all - absolutely correct. There are also deals in place with manufacturers as to what app store or streaming services are allowed to be 'compatible' with their smart TVs.
Smart TVs are cheap because you aren't the customer, you are the product. Or rather, your data + access to you sold off by what apps / services are on the TV is the product.
The trick (for these TVs specifically) is to get the cheap TV and then neuter it, either by hardware or software, so long as that is doable without making the TV obnoxious to use.
This does not really address the core problem being discussed here though. Only taking advantage of one specific symptom.
Ad/spyware subsidization is one of the reasons why TVs have become so cheap, but another is through use of awful quality components. While they’ll all have acceptable pictures to start out with,...
Ad/spyware subsidization is one of the reasons why TVs have become so cheap, but another is through use of awful quality components. While they’ll all have acceptable pictures to start out with, cheap TVs tend to degrade quickly and develop uneven backlighting, hue shifting, and image persistence (kind of like a soft burn in) among other things and are much more likely to fail. Cheap TVs are borderline manufactured e-waste in some cases.
Of course moving upmarket isn’t necessarily going to save you from all of this (do your research), but your chances of getting a quality product are much better. My current TV (a midrange 75” Sony Bravia) was expensive when it was new, but it’s free of adware and and still performs basically like it did when it was new despite being the better part of a decade old.
Tbf, I don't see why to get a TV at all in 2025. It's not like it offers you anything of value or anything you can't watch via a simple internet connection somehow (and sometimes with fewer or no...
Tbf, I don't see why to get a TV at all in 2025. It's not like it offers you anything of value or anything you can't watch via a simple internet connection somehow (and sometimes with fewer or no ads). My apartment has a TV and I never even opened it to see if it works - and if I needed such a large monitor for media/gaming/whatever I'd probably just buy a projector or a giant monitor.
? I think many people just use it as a large screen. That’s what a TV is. People want it because they want a large screen to consume media on with other people. A projector is much worse in terms...
? I think many people just use it as a large screen. That’s what a TV is. People want it because they want a large screen to consume media on with other people.
A projector is much worse in terms of visual fidelity and latency, and is subject external light condition.
Because watching movies on a 65" screen from my couch is more comfortable (and sociable) than doing so hunched over my laptop. A TV is just a giant monitor as long as you don't connect it to the...
Because watching movies on a 65" screen from my couch is more comfortable (and sociable) than doing so hunched over my laptop. A TV is just a giant monitor as long as you don't connect it to the internet.
Depends on your setup and household I suppose. I'd much rather watch a movie on my couch with a big TV than in my computer chair on the much smaller monitor. I would imagine families gravitate...
Depends on your setup and household I suppose. I'd much rather watch a movie on my couch with a big TV than in my computer chair on the much smaller monitor. I would imagine families gravitate towards TVs because you often want to watch things as a family. I think TVs have a lot of utility especially at their price point to size ratio.
They don't really make 80" monitors. At least not within the price range of most consumers. Projectors are also physically unable to display the color black, which is a pretty big deal if you ever...
They don't really make 80" monitors. At least not within the price range of most consumers.
Projectors are also physically unable to display the color black, which is a pretty big deal if you ever want to have decent contrast while watching something in a room that isn't pitch black. They also have a ton of other drawbacks that a TV doesn't. TVs are just way more convenient for most people.
My wife and I didn't get a TV throughout our marriage and have been fine using a decent sized monitor or an iPad for watching things together cuddled up. We also didn't want to get a TV with our...
My wife and I didn't get a TV throughout our marriage and have been fine using a decent sized monitor or an iPad for watching things together cuddled up. We also didn't want to get a TV with our kids being young as they get limited screen time and being able to take the iPad away when they're done makes it easy to control their access to it.
The only reason we've thought about getting one is we sat down for a movie evening when my kids were sick this last week, and it wasn't as nice using our monitor to watch a feature length film. Right now, the only reason I'd want a TV in my house is for the option to do a movie night with friends and family. This got me looking at TVs in the store and noticing the rise of "smart" TVs. My in-laws recently got one, but I can't stand the need to go through so many menus and see ads and s tuff directly on a TV.
When I moved a few years back I wanted to be able to do movie nights without sacrificing a rooms layout to TV/display placement. I bought a small portable projector that does a decent 8' display....
When I moved a few years back I wanted to be able to do movie nights without sacrificing a rooms layout to TV/display placement. I bought a small portable projector that does a decent 8' display. I can choose which wall to cast it on, and can display from multiple small devices. I pair it with Anker Bluetooth speaker I place on the floor against the wall with the image. The one we got was about $100 and I'd recommend it for movie nights as long as none of your viewers are super picky about video fidelity, like my friend who runs a broadcast studio and can't stand when A/V isn't perfectly tuned.
I don't own a TV for this reason - it provides nothing that a laptop and a projector can't do, and the projector has the bonus of 1) allowing you to watch movies on the wall, 2) playing games on...
I don't own a TV for this reason - it provides nothing that a laptop and a projector can't do, and the projector has the bonus of 1) allowing you to watch movies on the wall, 2) playing games on the wall, and 3) being delightfully transportable (which makes it great for movie nights at a friend's place!). If the quality of the stream is bad, we can always watch it on the laptop...or just deal with it, because I grew up with SD television and I don't care that much.
There's nothing quite like seeing a life-sized Link on your wall beating up Bokoblins (although sometimes my husband swings the camera around so fast that it gives me motion sickness). Ultimately though, it's one of the best purchases I've ever made! I love my projector and recommend it to anyone with a bare wall.
The biggest drawback of a projector is contrast ratio. If I had a nice screen in a dedicated theater room I could dim to watch movies in, I'd love a projector, but most of the time I'm watching...
The biggest drawback of a projector is contrast ratio. If I had a nice screen in a dedicated theater room I could dim to watch movies in, I'd love a projector, but most of the time I'm watching stuff in a bright ass living room, and a projector would look really washed out. Its also generally easier to run cables to a tv against the wall than a projector in the middle of the room.
I'm usually apartment-bound, with few options for where to set my projector up, but I have a short-throw and I just pop it on the coffee table (which is where my laptop goes) and I just plug them...
I'm usually apartment-bound, with few options for where to set my projector up, but I have a short-throw and I just pop it on the coffee table (which is where my laptop goes) and I just plug them into the same power strip. I haven't had any issues on that front, even across 6 different apartments. (And having moved to 6 different apartments, I have never had to worry much about my projector getting cracked or shattered or destroyed during a move - I pop it in its case and move it with the fragile things - no fuss, no worries.)
For contrast, if the room is really well lit, it can definitely be a problem during the day, but I've found with some decent shades or blinds it's not an issue. My husband wants the room pitch dark when he's playing games (turning the apartment into a cave...), but I've found that even with the blinds half-closed I can see fine. So I think it depends on the room and its orientation (and the strength of your shades).
I sometimes have an issue finding where to set it up, if there's no good wall for projecting - at one point I bought a sheet from the thrift store and pinned it above my bathroom door and tied it up when it wasn't in use, and another time I had to set it up over vertical blinds (so everything had lines through it). It wasn't ideal...but still not enough to buy a TV :)
In the absence of alternatives it is moot point. I can't go a buy smart TV of SuperSpecialBrand but with sane sw or just as a dumb tv for $1000+$100 or even $1000+$1000, I only have available the...
In the absence of alternatives it is moot point. I can't go a buy smart TV of SuperSpecialBrand but with sane sw or just as a dumb tv for $1000+$100 or even $1000+$1000, I only have available the $1000 price. Or wait actually the $999.999 super special sale price, nevermind.
Are the prices actually subsidized or are they simply higher margins? In the absence of actual price breakdowns it is guessing game based on the track record of these companies.
Going by commercial signage monitors is useless, they are different product and aimed at businesses besides. Going by computer monitors would probably be closer but again, different product, different considerations.
Yeah I don’t want to give it a hard time, and the guy is making a very good argument. But I basically just spent like 2.5 whole minutes to absorb a concept I could have absorbed in about 15...
Oh we're posting shorts now?
Yeah I don’t want to give it a hard time, and the guy is making a very good argument. But I basically just spent like 2.5 whole minutes to absorb a concept I could have absorbed in about 15 seconds if he had just posted a table and a paragraph.
It’s not even like he was padding. He was talking fast! But a lot of stuff is just better written out.
Probably because supply and demand economics only works if people have a choice in what they buy. All the units for rent in my city are mostly owned by one company. All the food comes from like...
Probably because supply and demand economics only works if people have a choice in what they buy.
All the units for rent in my city are mostly owned by one company.
All the food comes from like three companies.
Anyone can make a tv or a video game console, but not everyone can produce food or buy up all the housing in an entire city. Those things take capital to begin and maintain. The rich get richer.
All food definitely doesn't come from three companies. There are 42,700 food and beverage manufacturing companies in the US. There are many food corps: PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Tyson, General Mills,...
There are many food corps: PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Tyson, General Mills, Conagra, Hersheys, Kellogg's, Nestlé, Unilever, Prairie Farms, Darigold, Hostess, Chobani, Anheuser-Busch, Perdue, Danone, Schwan's, etc.
Agriculture itself is also fiercely competitive. Agglomeration in agriculture—small farms selling to large corp farms—due to economies of scale. The profit margins in growing and processing food are incredibly meager. The fact that an artisanal, locally made food products can cost 5–10+x more than their industrially produced counterparts speaks to that efficiency.
Food expenditure as percentage of family disposable income has decreased by 50% over the past century. It's only held steady in the past few decades as Americans' tastes have become more luxurious: we're eating a lot out more, eating more meat, eating more specialty foods (we have 1,000x more options than we had a century ago)... eating more, simply. Americans eat 15% more calories today than they did in the 70s.
The food sector is a showcase of supply and demand in action. If anything, Novo Nordisk's status as Europe's most valuable company is a testament to the oversupply of food (in the developed world).
With percentages you also need to look at the denominator, which in this case will include housing, health care, and other rising costs. Here’s another chart that’s just adjusted for inflation....
With percentages you also need to look at the denominator, which in this case will include housing, health care, and other rising costs.
Here’s another chart that’s just adjusted for inflation. “Food at home” is roughly flat and “food away from home” is up 3x.
Supply and demand economics still apply even if everything is made by one producer. There are natural monopolies like utilities or government-run healthcare which still adjust supply to respond to...
Supply and demand economics still apply even if everything is made by one producer. There are natural monopolies like utilities or government-run healthcare which still adjust supply to respond to demand.
There are regulatory constraints on increasing supply for many big-ticket items like housing. Some countries like Japan still build plenty of housing and have reasonable prices.
Supply and demand economics still work. They're the entire reason why housing is so expensive. You can keep making manufacturing cheaper and cheaper. You can develop more efficient processes, you...
Supply and demand economics still work. They're the entire reason why housing is so expensive. You can keep making manufacturing cheaper and cheaper. You can develop more efficient processes, you can find cheaper materials, you can outsource to places where labor is cheaper, and so on.
You can't somehow magically make more land in a city though. People want to live in cities because that's where jobs and amenities are, and we have more people, but the amount of land in a city is still the same, and it will always be the same. We can't somehow increase the supply of land significantly.
We can promote more efficient space utilization by increasing density, but that only improves things to a point, and only works in places that aren't yet dense, like north American cities. You're not going to somehow increase density and significantly bring down rental costs in Tokyo.
Housing in desirable areas will continue to get more and more expensive as the population of that area grows, because land is one of the few things we just cannot produce more of. Housing in the US being expensive now versus the 90s has less to do with development patterns (which were largely the same back then too), or corporate greed (which existed then as it does now), and more to do with the fact that we have the same amount of land, but 100 million more people that need a place to live.
Maybe not both at the same time but the rental prices in Tokyo have been remarkably stable over the last two decades despite the city’s population booming. Tokyo is an excellent example of just...
You're not going to somehow increase density and significantly bring down rental costs in Tokyo.
Maybe not both at the same time but the rental prices in Tokyo have been remarkably stable over the last two decades despite the city’s population booming. Tokyo is an excellent example of just how far building can get you.
From 2013-2023, Tokyo Prefecture (pop. 14MM) added 789,000 homes, net of demolitions, a 1.19% growth rate in a country with a shrinking population. California (pop. 39MM) added 924,000 homes over that time, or 0.68% per year, while the US population grew by about 18 million people.
Tokyo alone adds almost as many housing units as the entire state of California!
Tokyo is still adding many more units every year despite its already impressive density.
Tokyo is probably the only affordable Alpha+ Global City thanks to its abundant housing supply. There are lots of quirky, niche businesses that exist in Tokyo—shops for vintage hats, buttons, and...
Tokyo is probably the only affordable Alpha+ Global City thanks to its abundant housing supply.
There are lots of quirky, niche businesses that exist in Tokyo—shops for vintage hats, buttons, and calligraphy pens, and cafes with all kinds of unique themes—that would be totally nonviable in other major cities. Retail space is cheap and cost of living is relatively low, so people can pursue passion businesses without having to worry about 'making it big' in order to afford rent, wages, etc.
You can build more cities though. We’ve just chosen to make it illegal to replicate what makes the great old cities popular. A lot of our conversation centers around making it cheaper to live in...
You can't somehow magically make more land in a city though.
You can build more cities though. We’ve just chosen to make it illegal to replicate what makes the great old cities popular. A lot of our conversation centers around making it cheaper to live in the, like 8 places where there are jobs and urban amenities available. There is very little discussion about ambitious plans to convert a place like Baltimore or Richmond into an appealing enough metropolis that it can pull people away from wanting to settle down in NY, Boston, or DC. Those cities and states may individually try, but we’re not doing it Chinese style where we’re going to decide “this fishing village will contribute over $300 Billion per year to our GDP in 20 years.”
Framing this as “luxuries vs necessities” seems irresponsible. What he’s really comparing is entertainment technology. And his only necessity was housing lol. Those became cheap, because they...
Framing this as “luxuries vs necessities” seems irresponsible. What he’s really comparing is entertainment technology. And his only necessity was housing lol.
Those became cheap, because they dramatically decreased in price as technology improved and production matured.
There are necessities that became cheaper (like food or clothes) and luxuries that became more expensive (a broadway ticket, concerts). It depends on the country, and the field. It’s not a “luxury vs necessity” comparison.
We've always had slaves harvesting wheat (I'm assuming you're taking a fairly expansive definition of "slave" here). That's been a constant since the beginning of human civilization. Is what it...
We've always had slaves harvesting wheat (I'm assuming you're taking a fairly expansive definition of "slave" here). That's been a constant since the beginning of human civilization. Is what it is, but it's not increasing.
What changed in the 60s and 70s is that we've been able to create varieties of crops which have MUCH higher yields, and innate resistance to blight. Norman Borlough single handedly saved over a billion human lives by developing the strain of wheat now grown everywhere that is semi-dwarf, high-yield, and resistant to rust blight, and by proving that it was possible, triggering the Green Revolution which led to high yield variants of rice and other staple crops.
It's just a matter of fact that without the strains that came from the Green Revolution, it would be physically impossible to grow enough food to feed the current population even if every single person was a slave working 18 hour days growing food.
The researchers working on genetic engineering of crops are the unsung heroes of the modern era.
Some kinds of food got cheap because the machines took those jobs. Growing crops like grain and corn is mostly done by machine. (Fruits and vegetables, not so much.) Here’s a graph:...
Some kinds of food got cheap because the machines took those jobs. Growing crops like grain and corn is mostly done by machine. (Fruits and vegetables, not so much.)
Although I agree with your point, I would like to point out that without supporting evidence your graph says nothing to support your point. A decrease of agricultural jobs in America could be due...
Although I agree with your point, I would like to point out that without supporting evidence your graph says nothing to support your point. A decrease of agricultural jobs in America could be due to many other factors apart from automation (eg. importing foods, increased yields per crop, etc.). However, I do think you’re probably right
And where it isn't slave labor, it's because of governmental subsidies to ensure food is grown and sold well below a fair market cost (especially animal protein sources.)
And where it isn't slave labor, it's because of governmental subsidies to ensure food is grown and sold well below a fair market cost (especially animal protein sources.)
Government subsidies don't necessarily increase supply. If there are limits on production, increasing subsidies won't increase production. It's also possible that limited production capacity will...
Government subsidies don't necessarily increase supply. If there are limits on production, increasing subsidies won't increase production. It's also possible that limited production capacity will just shift based on subsidies (wheat to rice, pork to cattle, etc).
If material goods become cheaper, people will allocate that money to other expenses like housing: buy a bigger home, buy a nicer home, buy a home in a more popular area, etc. Material goods can...
If material goods become cheaper, people will allocate that money to other expenses like housing: buy a bigger home, buy a nicer home, buy a home in a more popular area, etc. Material goods can scale and drive down costs, but as Lex Luthor likes to say, they're not making any more land. Watch housing continue to grow as a percentage of expenses as other expenses decrease due to efficiency gains.
Minor nitpick with Mr. Freddie: the US gov has average rent at $243 in 1980 and at $447 in 1990, so I don't know why he picked $200.
But we are running out of affordable land which has infrastructure (water, sewer, electricity, internet, cell, plowing), where the resident can meaningfully drive to work, school, groceries and...
But we are running out of affordable land which has infrastructure (water, sewer, electricity, internet, cell, plowing), where the resident can meaningfully drive to work, school, groceries and doctors. It's crazy ironic that in Canada we have a housing crisis when 90%+ of our land is "not livable". I live somewhere cheap because I can afford to: most others cannot afford to live on this cheap land.
I don't think this was your intention, but you've highlighted a big part of the problem. So much emphasis is put on being able to drive that cities are unable to properly densify without giving up...
where the resident can meaningfully drive to work, school, groceries and doctors
I don't think this was your intention, but you've highlighted a big part of the problem. So much emphasis is put on being able to drive that cities are unable to properly densify without giving up parking spots and driving lanes.
In Toronto, there are currently thousands of unsold shoebox condos that nobody actually wants. For a decade, they've been maximizing unit numbers instead of building housing that people can actually use, and I think it's finally reached a breaking point.
Developers are trying to wait this out instead of undercutting each other in a race to the bottom, but I don't think it'll work this time. No one wanted them in the first place, but they bought because they had no other options. Today, people aren't buying them, and it's not because they (still) don't want them, it's because they can no longer afford them.
If you want more affordable housing, prices have to drop, and a market correction is an essential part of the solution. It will solve itself, but it takes a while to convince sellers that they...
Economists at TD now predict that by the end of 2025, condo prices in Toronto will have dropped 15 to 20 percent from their peak in the third quarter of 2023.
If you want more affordable housing, prices have to drop, and a market correction is an essential part of the solution. It will solve itself, but it takes a while to convince sellers that they need to accept a lower price.
I don't even think Lex Luthor was saying we're running out of land? Just that it's a finite resource. Unlike iphones (which, technically, there's an upper limit, and I think we'll either have more...
I don't even think Lex Luthor was saying we're running out of land? Just that it's a finite resource. Unlike iphones (which, technically, there's an upper limit, and I think we'll either have more pressing issues societally than those limits before we reach them, or societally we won't care anymore lol).
Except most people aren't doing that at all! Even the cheapest houses are generally so fucking expensive these days in most markets that most people can't afford to buy one anymore. This isn't...
If material goods become cheaper, people will allocate that money to other expenses like housing: buy a bigger home, buy a nicer home, buy a home in a more popular area, etc.
Except most people aren't doing that at all! Even the cheapest houses are generally so fucking expensive these days in most markets that most people can't afford to buy one anymore. This isn't about efficiency gains and reallocation of funds at all, it's just the opposite. It's a result of the middle class slowly disappearing thanks to wage stagnation.
The middle class, once the economic stratum of a clear majority of American adults, has steadily contracted in the past five decades. The share of adults who live in middle-class households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2021, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.
This figure shows that the stakes of rising inequality for the broad American middle class are enormous. The figure compares the income growth of the middle three-fifths of American households since 1979 to their income growth had there been no growth in inequality. In 2007, the last year before the Great Recession, the average income of the middle 60 percent of American households was $76,443. It would have been $94,310, roughly 23 percent (nearly $18,000) higher had inequality not widened (i.e., had their incomes grown at the overall average rate—an overall average buoyed by stratospheric growth at the very top). The temporary dip in top incomes during the Great Recession did little to shrink that inequality tax, which stood at 16 percent (nearly $12,000) in 2011.
Figure 1
The U.S. middle class had $17,867 less income in 2007 because of the growth of inequality since 1979
Thanks for the links. Read the Pew one, but only skimmed the EPI one for now. My first instinct was that society's move to a double income household as the default really hurts unmarried people....
Thanks for the links. Read the Pew one, but only skimmed the EPI one for now. My first instinct was that society's move to a double income household as the default really hurts unmarried people. But that's probably wrong, as the chart here doesn't line up and doesn't show as large of a change as I would expect if it were the case.
Looking at the breakdown of demographics of those that lost, it seems like a college education matters a lot. And since men have been trending downward in enrollments since at least 1970, that tracks better. (EDIT: See below comment for correction!) Back to the Pew article, I would bet that all the declining demographics are mostly composed of men. They're not keeping up with increasingly tough education requirements.
Anyway, to the topic at hand (housing affordability), you say that most people aren't buying homes, but the home ownership range has been in the same range as in the 80s. I know that "homeownership rate" is defined by the government as percentage of homes that are owner-occupied, instead of the percentage of adults that are homeowners, so if I can find a better source I'll link it. However, since the average household size has not increased, but decreased since the 1980s, it seems like this is a fine statistic to rely on.
Men's enrollment relative to women has trended down, but completion and enrollment in college has trended upwards for men. ~25% of men and women had a bachelors in 1995, but in 2024 that was 37%...
Men's enrollment relative to women has trended down, but completion and enrollment in college has trended upwards for men. ~25% of men and women had a bachelors in 1995, but in 2024 that was 37% of men and 47% of women.
By definition, prices are set based on what the market will tolerate. Goods are listed for a price that'll sell. Even if a £4 million flat is unaffordable to you, someone is buying it or else it...
Even the cheapest houses are generally so fucking expensive these days in most markets that most people can't afford to buy one anymore.
By definition, prices are set based on what the market will tolerate. Goods are listed for a price that'll sell. Even if a £4 million flat is unaffordable to you, someone is buying it or else it wouldn't be listed at that price.
In Canada especially, home production and supply have cratered and failed to keep up with increasing demand.
This phrase should send a chill up your spine - if something is true "by definition" then it is true regardless of what the world looks like; it means you're making a semantic statement...
By definition
This phrase should send a chill up your spine - if something is true "by definition" then it is true regardless of what the world looks like; it means you're making a semantic statement disconnected from reality.
Housing often doesn't sell (or rent) at market rate - a big one is that renting at a low price will decrease the on-paper value of the house for mortgage purposes, while leaving it vacant will not. I'm not talking about tenant damages here, I'm talking about the mechanism by which banks infer the value of your property.
Anyway, point is, if you take a very highly leveraged mortgage and then rent low enough, the home will be reevaluated to less than the cost of the mortgage, and the banks might decide to repossess your home. This results in landlords being forced to rent above market rates.
There are plenty of effects like this (the big one being inflexible demand - people will regularly go into debt and skip meals to keep rent paid), any definition that treats housing as a normal market good is flawed.
Housing is a market by all economic definitions. Everything you've mentioned are 100% factors in the market price of housing and would come up in ECON 102 discussions of why supply and demand are...
Housing is a market by all economic definitions. Everything you've mentioned are 100% factors in the market price of housing and would come up in ECON 102 discussions of why supply and demand are never perfectly aligned.
Homes and storefronts staying empty is rare even in the most restrictive markets in the world. It absolutely happens for the reasons you mentioned, but it's a common myth that there's some huge supply that's simply not responding to market forces.
In the micro, a storefront might not be rented out at a lower rate due to a bank's mortgage terms specifying a minimum rent, but at the macro level other property owners will respond and adjust accordingly. The laws of supply and demand still apply here.
I can say that in my experience in the Bay Area, there are entire blocks of 5 over 1 construction with entirely empty retail space on the ground floor. The zoning and construction requirements...
I can say that in my experience in the Bay Area, there are entire blocks of 5 over 1 construction with entirely empty retail space on the ground floor. The zoning and construction requirements push for retail space to be available on the ground floor, but the developers build only with an eye to the (more profitable) housing on the upper floors, expecting to break even without the retail space. So you see blocks where the retail space has been empty for a literal decade. Yes, this is a distortion of the market due to the relative incentives for retail and residential construction, but when you say that storefronts staying empty is rare in even the most restrictive markets in the world it simply doesn't match my experience. The landlords are happy to profit off the residential and avoid any administrative costs of renting out the retail areas at a rate that could be sustained by a retail business in that space.
Similarly, my city has a tax on empty rental property, trying to ensure that housing is used as much as possible rather than being left empty while it's used as an investment vehicle. But there's an exemption for housing undergoing work sufficient to make it uninhabitable. This has led to a couple percent of all the homes in my neighborhood having stalled out mid-refurbishment for unknown reasons. And so now the land is appreciating in value, but the property value (and thus tax) is much lower. Again, this is a distortion due to regulation, but I've seen houses sit empty for 20 years because the land is appreciating in value and the owners don't want to manage it.
California is uniquely fucked by proposition 13 essentially freezing property tax rates. San Francisco is also one of the most NIMBY cities in the US (which is why it's the birthplace of...
California is uniquely fucked by proposition 13 essentially freezing property tax rates. San Francisco is also one of the most NIMBY cities in the US (which is why it's the birthplace of YIMBYism).
5-over-1's get built because they come with guaranteed foot traffic for the businesses at ground level. They're excellent mixed use developments which support exactly the kind of urbanism America needs more of. The retail spaces are usually anchors that subsidize the housing, depending on the project. It's not uncommon for a grocery store to take the bottom floor of a 5-over-1 to make a project pencil out.
San Francisco's woes with high vacancy rates are due to a whole clusterfuck of factors that stifle development and make the cost of running a business extremely high. Employee costs are high due to the cost of housing and local regulations, and there are constant roadblocks to running an efficient business. The regulations are practically written to smother entrepreneurship (outside of corporate offices).
That's true for only a small percentage of housing in almost all markets around the world. The majority of housing is owner-occupied. Unless you consider Singapore's 99 year leases to be corporate...
That's true for only a small percentage of housing in almost all markets around the world. The majority of housing is owner-occupied. Unless you consider Singapore's 99 year leases to be corporate in nature.
Across all markets, sure, but we're talking about those markets where people generally can't afford to own a home. I'm pointing out that "the market" isn't solely made up of people who need a...
Across all markets, sure, but we're talking about those markets where people generally can't afford to own a home. I'm pointing out that "the market" isn't solely made up of people who need a place to live, those people are competing with corporations and career landlords who have far more capital at their disposal.
Corporate landlords aren't the problem. NIMBYs that block new construction are the real villains. The Netherlands banned corporate landlords, and housing prices went up (disparately impacting...
Corporate landlords aren't the problem. NIMBYs that block new construction are the real villains.
The Netherlands banned corporate landlords, and housing prices went up (disparately impacting low-income households and increasing displacement) because they play a unique role in the housing market: https://www.stessa.com/blog/netherlands-banned-landlords/
Oh we're posting shorts now?
I'm kidding. I was helping my mom get a new TV and had been eyeballing them myself as I prepare to move out next year and was surprised that you can get a 50in for a decent price for $220 (Visio, not top of the line in the US, but still, our last Visio lasted like 12 years).
I think it's more about the fact we're being squeezed for the necessities than the luxuries. Those are technologies that got cheaper, and are even bundled. CD Player, cellphone? Put your music on your iPhone.
But definitely, the squeeze is precisely on these necessities. My area's cheap rent is like $1700 a month, my complex has two apartments around $1850. I'm amazed people can afford it making less than I do.
Is our collective attention span slowly being destroyed? I think so? idk I was gonna say something but I can't remember what
Anyhow—this guy or someone who looks like him has another video I've seen pointing out that, in the 90s, people (mostly yuppies) were paying $5 for Starbucks, on the reg, and the oldheads would tell them to stop wasting that income & they could buy a house/get a better apt/etc, and he did the math on a daily Starbucks habit vs rent @$500 or whatever; now that it's 2025 & Starbucks is... $5 but rent is $1.5-2K+, yeah you can't frugal your way out of that, so why bother. If I'm hoarding cash to maybe buy a house, one day, years from now, while housing is skyrocketing, but I can get board games & Legos instead for more money but comparatively affordably, yeah it makes sense. And the cutoff was so sharp! In the past five years the average mortgage payment has doubled or more. So I don't think it's been bad for long enough to tell yet what it will be like.
And this has a fatal effect on other businesses. We can't afford to spend $200-300 each, for a night out now, so we won't: we'll collectively spend $20-50 on that one boardgame we'll share and play for weeks.
Go out for movies, are you crazy? No, we'll sit at home and surf and high seas, maybe splurge on a package of microwave popcorn purchased at Costco for $2 each.
My group of friends used to do Dine out Vancouver where we'd each pay $50-100 per person for dinner at a nicer restaurant with a set menu. It's insanity in today's standards: we'll buy (not even that affordable) groceries and cook at home
★ You'd be one of my friends coming over to play the board game free ★ (but still, I hope things pick up soon)
short answer: malls and shops are dying everywhere. except where they are somehow getting tax / govt subsidies / bread-scamming monopolies on groceries.
The crunch in residential rents hits commercial leases too. In a lot of big cities it’s very hard to start up a new business unless it gets super high revenues to be able to make the lease and pay the staff enough to be able to afford to live near work. This basically means all you have are luxury boutiques, bars, and fancy restaurants. Greasy spoons can’t make it unless they own their building. Forget about low margin businesses that need a lot of floor space, like a neighborhood hardware store or a hobby shop.
This is part of why things like food trucks and delivery-only restaurants have become such a popular concept in the past few decades. The former can be located in the shittiest real estate imaginable without affecting business and the latter doesn’t require any land whatsoever.
This doesn’t really work for retail, though. The exceptions are businesses like Snap-On dealers, sort of, but because of their specific clientele I might consider them more to be a delivery company that carries their entire inventory with them.
My previous interactions with mechanics who are not using Snap-On lead me to believe that they might just be a cult. :P
Seriously, though, I think that the thing that makes them special is that they're more of a tool service company than a retail operation. It seems in many cases that if a tool breaks they can just call their dealer and have a replacement for them pretty quickly instead of having to take a trip out to go get one. Especially because these days the tools sold in stores tend to be somewhere between "decent enough" and "one step away from a landfill".
Isn't that kind of the opposite of the premise of the video/thread?
Going out to eat, or going to the movies is a luxury. Groceries are a necessity though.
the video lists CD Player, TV, cell, computer, microwave as luxuries in the 80s. Let's try to talk about a night out.
Going out for two people: dinner and movie, to see “Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back,” in 1980: $30.72 according to this list and $28.43 according to this list -- if we take $30, divide it by $200 rent, that's 15%, which is kind of expensive.
$30 in 1980 is worth $116.41 today. The second link has the price of a date in 2016 at $89.90, where moneygeek (aol) has it at $123 in 2024, depending on city. So in inflated adjusted price it's more money now.
BUT. the video/thread was talking about luxuries compared to housing cost. Remember it was 15% month's rent for a night out then. 123/2000 is 6%. So....it's more "affordable" to go out for a night, even though it's absolutely more than before, because of how ridiculously unaffordable rent has become. We're getting hosed from both ends.
Something about all entertainment optimizing for engagement and addiction, not quality.
There's a reason slot machines are loud and fast.
I don't know how tinfoil hat worthy this is, but I also wonder if the rise of cheaper TVs is also funded by the rise of "smart" TVs who serve ads and harvest user data.
I was at the electronics store here and saw large nice looking TVs were a lot more affordable than I thought but every single none them had some form of smart/ai element to it.
I know when we finally get a TV I'm either going to try and find a "dumb" TV or segment the TV in its own section of my network and then block it's traffic out. I have heard (can't remember where) that some TVs will hold your data and wait until an unsecure wifi network is available before phoning home with that data, but I'd need to double check that to make sure that is true.
Just feels like we're getting cool tech but with strings attached.
Eh. The major cost of a TV is the microchips and display, and both of those industries have become much, much more productive and efficient in the last quarter century.
That's a good point, I partially take off my tinfoil hat. Economy of scales is a huge help in making consumer electronics available at a good price point.
Economy of scale for LCDs (and soon LEDs) is ludicrous. They ship billions per quarter.
I suspect smartphones in particular have made them cheap - not just because of their volume, but because of their size and how that guarantees yields have low wastage.
See, the way LCDs work is you basically make a huge sheet of LCD (which will have dead pixels sprinkled randomly on it), then cut out any contiguous pieces of no-dead-pixel LCD, to make into a screen. Large screens obviously require you to be very lucky (since you need an unusually-long contiguous section without dead pixels) but if you're selling small screens you can just cut out multiple small screens from your failed almost-big-screen sections.
So selling lots of small screens reduces waste from making big screens, which makes them cheaper.
I’ve seen numbers in the $100-200 range over the lifespan of the device for TVs (e.g. https://omdia.tech.informa.com/om030986/in-the-smart-tv-industry-will-adsupported-business-models-drive-free-tvs-in-2023), which sounds roughly in line with what I’d expect.
My bigger problem is that I can’t say “here’s $200 to make up for it, now give me control of my hardware” - because that would identify me as a more technical, less price conscious consumer, possibly even a business user, and if I’m in that bracket then there's a chance I could theoretically be coerced to pay a lot more than $200 extra. Paying anything less than a $2,000 markup is surely tantamount to stealing food off the plates of the poor Samsung CEO’s children.
Not sure about slightly downmarket brands like Vizio or TCL, but Samsung and LG TVs are still perfectly usable without being connected to the internet at all, and even support firmware updates via USB.
Yeah, TV kept offline and a Pi or similar plugged in is definitely the way to go, but it does still annoy me that they've got to be fastidiously walled off from the network and supplemented with a secondary device.
Unfortunately, some of this is no longer true for many TVs, especially the cheaper models. They will actively seek out any unsecured access point or other internet connection and some come "Bundled with Bullshit (tm)", so no internet means you will likely just see the same pre-loaded ads that will get less and less relevant.
I recently needed an inexpensive TV for our basement and I was able to find that Sceptre still sells affordable dumb TVs. It's no frills, but it has worked great. It was $150. I just looked on Amazon and it looks like they are no longer for sale, but it is unlikely that no one is selling them.
So this is a claim I've seen, but never seen strong evidence for. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because actual unsecured WiFi is borderline nonexistent in 2025. To reliably capture data from and serve ads to the small fraction of users trying to avoid exactly those things would require them to put in a cellular modem and establish deals with wireless carriers. Which is far from impossible, but it is a fair amount of additional investment for a pretty small ROI when the vast majority of people buying these things will just connect to their home WiFi without a second thought.
I have a Samsung in my bedroom and an LG in my living room, both only a couple years old. They both just act like dumb displays because they've never been connected to the internet. There aren't any ads, and I never even see their "smart TV" home screen because everything is controlled via HDMI CEC and I almost never even have to touch the remotes that came with the displays.
Of course, LG and Samsung exist upmarket of TCL and Vizio, so while "Smart TV" ad revenue may be factored into the price, I doubt either of them are relying exclusively on ads to turn a profit like Vizio.
My comment was more focused on the cheaper models you mentioned rather than LG or Samsung. LG and Samsung are almost certainly not relying heavily on ads (or more likely selling user data), but Samsung was also one of the first TVs that I know of that put actual ads in the UI, not even on cheap models. I have two LG TVs, both purchased at the same time, and the larger higher end model was actually the one that got a firmware update that screamed "enshittification" where as the other one still lets me mostly just use it like a dumb TV. All of the TV OEMs that I know have started going down this dark path in the last year or so, previously Vizio was just a standout for user antagonism.
As far as evidence about TVs connecting to unsecured wifi, ironically the only incident that I have ever seen any purported proof was for a Samsung TV on their forums. I have also seen a few reports of Amazon Fire TV products doing it (which would not surprise me), but I didn't look further because I don't own any Amazon devices. I have seen an article on one of the TV OEMs filing a patent for using some sort of mesh protocol to try to reach out to the internet. I'm sorry that I do not have any direct links to give you better information on this. It is almost certainly not widespread, but what little trust I had in any of these manufacturers is gone so I do not believe they deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point.
Isn't that what all the cars do these days? Granted, those cost quite a bit more than TVs. I know I've heard of some cars displaying ads but I'm mostly paranoid about GPS tracking, remote vehicle disabling, and microphone listening. There hasn't been nearly enough reporting about this stuff, but the little I've seen has been extremely ominous.
Yeah, but they do it in cars because cars drive around. You can't rely on wifi for infotainment/navigation/remote control connectivity in the car. As you pointed out, it's one thing to pay for a perpetual 5g connection when you're selling a $70,000 car. It's an entirely different one when you're selling a $150 TV.
I have a Vizio and haven't had any issues from keeping it disconnected. Though I was flabbergasted when my mother-in-law babysat the kids one night and, after putting them to bed, took it upon herself to connect the TV to wifi for me. Of course there's no option to remove that once it's set up! Thankfully I just blocked its MAC address at the router level but I was still pretty miffed for a while. Thankfully, I never once saw an ad pop up on there so I guess no damage was done.
Yes, the advertising and data collection is almost certainly subsidizing the costs. Vizio, for instance, had and article written about them years ago about how their advertising and data collection operations were making more money than their TVs were.
The "they own a flat screen TV" is still thrown at low income families in an attempt to make them look like scroungers in the UK as if it's some high value crazy thing. It's weird.
When you're looking for a TV, have a look around at monitors as well. A while back, I got a very TV-like monitor (it even came with a remote!) for about the same price as an equivalent smart TV.
You might also want to have a look at commercial displays. I found that these were more expensive for their feature set (aimed at businesses and designed to be very robust), but I still would have picked one over a smart TV.
I appreciate your tip! I'll need to see what size we end up going with, but I'm also guessing that this will be a year or two down the line before we start considering getting a TV.
Not tinfoil hat at all - absolutely correct. There are also deals in place with manufacturers as to what app store or streaming services are allowed to be 'compatible' with their smart TVs.
Smart TVs are cheap because you aren't the customer, you are the product. Or rather, your data + access to you sold off by what apps / services are on the TV is the product.
The trick (for these TVs specifically) is to get the cheap TV and then neuter it, either by hardware or software, so long as that is doable without making the TV obnoxious to use.
This does not really address the core problem being discussed here though. Only taking advantage of one specific symptom.
Ad/spyware subsidization is one of the reasons why TVs have become so cheap, but another is through use of awful quality components. While they’ll all have acceptable pictures to start out with, cheap TVs tend to degrade quickly and develop uneven backlighting, hue shifting, and image persistence (kind of like a soft burn in) among other things and are much more likely to fail. Cheap TVs are borderline manufactured e-waste in some cases.
Of course moving upmarket isn’t necessarily going to save you from all of this (do your research), but your chances of getting a quality product are much better. My current TV (a midrange 75” Sony Bravia) was expensive when it was new, but it’s free of adware and and still performs basically like it did when it was new despite being the better part of a decade old.
Tbf, I don't see why to get a TV at all in 2025. It's not like it offers you anything of value or anything you can't watch via a simple internet connection somehow (and sometimes with fewer or no ads). My apartment has a TV and I never even opened it to see if it works - and if I needed such a large monitor for media/gaming/whatever I'd probably just buy a projector or a giant monitor.
? I think many people just use it as a large screen. That’s what a TV is. People want it because they want a large screen to consume media on with other people.
A projector is much worse in terms of visual fidelity and latency, and is subject external light condition.
Because watching movies on a 65" screen from my couch is more comfortable (and sociable) than doing so hunched over my laptop. A TV is just a giant monitor as long as you don't connect it to the internet.
Depends on your setup and household I suppose. I'd much rather watch a movie on my couch with a big TV than in my computer chair on the much smaller monitor. I would imagine families gravitate towards TVs because you often want to watch things as a family. I think TVs have a lot of utility especially at their price point to size ratio.
They don't really make 80" monitors. At least not within the price range of most consumers.
Projectors are also physically unable to display the color black, which is a pretty big deal if you ever want to have decent contrast while watching something in a room that isn't pitch black. They also have a ton of other drawbacks that a TV doesn't. TVs are just way more convenient for most people.
My wife and I didn't get a TV throughout our marriage and have been fine using a decent sized monitor or an iPad for watching things together cuddled up. We also didn't want to get a TV with our kids being young as they get limited screen time and being able to take the iPad away when they're done makes it easy to control their access to it.
The only reason we've thought about getting one is we sat down for a movie evening when my kids were sick this last week, and it wasn't as nice using our monitor to watch a feature length film. Right now, the only reason I'd want a TV in my house is for the option to do a movie night with friends and family. This got me looking at TVs in the store and noticing the rise of "smart" TVs. My in-laws recently got one, but I can't stand the need to go through so many menus and see ads and s tuff directly on a TV.
When I moved a few years back I wanted to be able to do movie nights without sacrificing a rooms layout to TV/display placement. I bought a small portable projector that does a decent 8' display. I can choose which wall to cast it on, and can display from multiple small devices. I pair it with Anker Bluetooth speaker I place on the floor against the wall with the image. The one we got was about $100 and I'd recommend it for movie nights as long as none of your viewers are super picky about video fidelity, like my friend who runs a broadcast studio and can't stand when A/V isn't perfectly tuned.
I don't own a TV for this reason - it provides nothing that a laptop and a projector can't do, and the projector has the bonus of 1) allowing you to watch movies on the wall, 2) playing games on the wall, and 3) being delightfully transportable (which makes it great for movie nights at a friend's place!). If the quality of the stream is bad, we can always watch it on the laptop...or just deal with it, because I grew up with SD television and I don't care that much.
There's nothing quite like seeing a life-sized Link on your wall beating up Bokoblins (although sometimes my husband swings the camera around so fast that it gives me motion sickness). Ultimately though, it's one of the best purchases I've ever made! I love my projector and recommend it to anyone with a bare wall.
The biggest drawback of a projector is contrast ratio. If I had a nice screen in a dedicated theater room I could dim to watch movies in, I'd love a projector, but most of the time I'm watching stuff in a bright ass living room, and a projector would look really washed out. Its also generally easier to run cables to a tv against the wall than a projector in the middle of the room.
I'm usually apartment-bound, with few options for where to set my projector up, but I have a short-throw and I just pop it on the coffee table (which is where my laptop goes) and I just plug them into the same power strip. I haven't had any issues on that front, even across 6 different apartments. (And having moved to 6 different apartments, I have never had to worry much about my projector getting cracked or shattered or destroyed during a move - I pop it in its case and move it with the fragile things - no fuss, no worries.)
For contrast, if the room is really well lit, it can definitely be a problem during the day, but I've found with some decent shades or blinds it's not an issue. My husband wants the room pitch dark when he's playing games (turning the apartment into a cave...), but I've found that even with the blinds half-closed I can see fine. So I think it depends on the room and its orientation (and the strength of your shades).
I sometimes have an issue finding where to set it up, if there's no good wall for projecting - at one point I bought a sheet from the thrift store and pinned it above my bathroom door and tied it up when it wasn't in use, and another time I had to set it up over vertical blinds (so everything had lines through it). It wasn't ideal...but still not enough to buy a TV :)
In the absence of alternatives it is moot point. I can't go a buy smart TV of SuperSpecialBrand but with sane sw or just as a dumb tv for $1000+$100 or even $1000+$1000, I only have available the $1000 price. Or wait actually the $999.999 super special sale price, nevermind.
Are the prices actually subsidized or are they simply higher margins? In the absence of actual price breakdowns it is guessing game based on the track record of these companies.
Going by commercial signage monitors is useless, they are different product and aimed at businesses besides. Going by computer monitors would probably be closer but again, different product, different considerations.
Yeah I don’t want to give it a hard time, and the guy is making a very good argument. But I basically just spent like 2.5 whole minutes to absorb a concept I could have absorbed in about 15 seconds if he had just posted a table and a paragraph.
It’s not even like he was padding. He was talking fast! But a lot of stuff is just better written out.
Probably because supply and demand economics only works if people have a choice in what they buy.
All the units for rent in my city are mostly owned by one company.
All the food comes from like three companies.
Anyone can make a tv or a video game console, but not everyone can produce food or buy up all the housing in an entire city. Those things take capital to begin and maintain. The rich get richer.
All food definitely doesn't come from three companies. There are 42,700 food and beverage manufacturing companies in the US.
There are many food corps: PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Tyson, General Mills, Conagra, Hersheys, Kellogg's, Nestlé, Unilever, Prairie Farms, Darigold, Hostess, Chobani, Anheuser-Busch, Perdue, Danone, Schwan's, etc.
Agriculture itself is also fiercely competitive. Agglomeration in agriculture—small farms selling to large corp farms—due to economies of scale. The profit margins in growing and processing food are incredibly meager. The fact that an artisanal, locally made food products can cost 5–10+x more than their industrially produced counterparts speaks to that efficiency.
Food expenditure as percentage of family disposable income has decreased by 50% over the past century. It's only held steady in the past few decades as Americans' tastes have become more luxurious: we're eating a lot out more, eating more meat, eating more specialty foods (we have 1,000x more options than we had a century ago)... eating more, simply. Americans eat 15% more calories today than they did in the 70s.
The food sector is a showcase of supply and demand in action. If anything, Novo Nordisk's status as Europe's most valuable company is a testament to the oversupply of food (in the developed world).
With percentages you also need to look at the denominator, which in this case will include housing, health care, and other rising costs.
Here’s another chart that’s just adjusted for inflation. “Food at home” is roughly flat and “food away from home” is up 3x.
Supply and demand economics still apply even if everything is made by one producer. There are natural monopolies like utilities or government-run healthcare which still adjust supply to respond to demand.
There are regulatory constraints on increasing supply for many big-ticket items like housing. Some countries like Japan still build plenty of housing and have reasonable prices.
Supply and demand economics still work. They're the entire reason why housing is so expensive. You can keep making manufacturing cheaper and cheaper. You can develop more efficient processes, you can find cheaper materials, you can outsource to places where labor is cheaper, and so on.
You can't somehow magically make more land in a city though. People want to live in cities because that's where jobs and amenities are, and we have more people, but the amount of land in a city is still the same, and it will always be the same. We can't somehow increase the supply of land significantly.
We can promote more efficient space utilization by increasing density, but that only improves things to a point, and only works in places that aren't yet dense, like north American cities. You're not going to somehow increase density and significantly bring down rental costs in Tokyo.
Housing in desirable areas will continue to get more and more expensive as the population of that area grows, because land is one of the few things we just cannot produce more of. Housing in the US being expensive now versus the 90s has less to do with development patterns (which were largely the same back then too), or corporate greed (which existed then as it does now), and more to do with the fact that we have the same amount of land, but 100 million more people that need a place to live.
Maybe not both at the same time but the rental prices in Tokyo have been remarkably stable over the last two decades despite the city’s population booming. Tokyo is an excellent example of just how far building can get you.
Tokyo alone adds almost as many housing units as the entire state of California!
Tokyo is still adding many more units every year despite its already impressive density.
Tokyo is probably the only affordable Alpha+ Global City thanks to its abundant housing supply.
There are lots of quirky, niche businesses that exist in Tokyo—shops for vintage hats, buttons, and calligraphy pens, and cafes with all kinds of unique themes—that would be totally nonviable in other major cities. Retail space is cheap and cost of living is relatively low, so people can pursue passion businesses without having to worry about 'making it big' in order to afford rent, wages, etc.
You can build more cities though. We’ve just chosen to make it illegal to replicate what makes the great old cities popular. A lot of our conversation centers around making it cheaper to live in the, like 8 places where there are jobs and urban amenities available. There is very little discussion about ambitious plans to convert a place like Baltimore or Richmond into an appealing enough metropolis that it can pull people away from wanting to settle down in NY, Boston, or DC. Those cities and states may individually try, but we’re not doing it Chinese style where we’re going to decide “this fishing village will contribute over $300 Billion per year to our GDP in 20 years.”
Framing this as “luxuries vs necessities” seems irresponsible. What he’s really comparing is entertainment technology. And his only necessity was housing lol.
Those became cheap, because they dramatically decreased in price as technology improved and production matured.
There are necessities that became cheaper (like food or clothes) and luxuries that became more expensive (a broadway ticket, concerts). It depends on the country, and the field. It’s not a “luxury vs necessity” comparison.
Food is only cheaper because we have slaves harvesting it.
We've always had slaves harvesting wheat (I'm assuming you're taking a fairly expansive definition of "slave" here). That's been a constant since the beginning of human civilization. Is what it is, but it's not increasing.
What changed in the 60s and 70s is that we've been able to create varieties of crops which have MUCH higher yields, and innate resistance to blight. Norman Borlough single handedly saved over a billion human lives by developing the strain of wheat now grown everywhere that is semi-dwarf, high-yield, and resistant to rust blight, and by proving that it was possible, triggering the Green Revolution which led to high yield variants of rice and other staple crops.
It's just a matter of fact that without the strains that came from the Green Revolution, it would be physically impossible to grow enough food to feed the current population even if every single person was a slave working 18 hour days growing food.
The researchers working on genetic engineering of crops are the unsung heroes of the modern era.
Some kinds of food got cheap because the machines took those jobs. Growing crops like grain and corn is mostly done by machine. (Fruits and vegetables, not so much.)
Here’s a graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEMANA
Although I agree with your point, I would like to point out that without supporting evidence your graph says nothing to support your point. A decrease of agricultural jobs in America could be due to many other factors apart from automation (eg. importing foods, increased yields per crop, etc.). However, I do think you’re probably right
That's a fair point - it's supporting evidence, but other evidence would be needed to really prove it.
And where it isn't slave labor, it's because of governmental subsidies to ensure food is grown and sold well below a fair market cost (especially animal protein sources.)
Government subsidies don't necessarily increase supply. If there are limits on production, increasing subsidies won't increase production. It's also possible that limited production capacity will just shift based on subsidies (wheat to rice, pork to cattle, etc).
If material goods become cheaper, people will allocate that money to other expenses like housing: buy a bigger home, buy a nicer home, buy a home in a more popular area, etc. Material goods can scale and drive down costs, but as Lex Luthor likes to say, they're not making any more land. Watch housing continue to grow as a percentage of expenses as other expenses decrease due to efficiency gains.
Minor nitpick with Mr. Freddie: the US gov has average rent at $243 in 1980 and at $447 in 1990, so I don't know why he picked $200.
But we are running out of affordable land which has infrastructure (water, sewer, electricity, internet, cell, plowing), where the resident can meaningfully drive to work, school, groceries and doctors. It's crazy ironic that in Canada we have a housing crisis when 90%+ of our land is "not livable". I live somewhere cheap because I can afford to: most others cannot afford to live on this cheap land.
I don't think this was your intention, but you've highlighted a big part of the problem. So much emphasis is put on being able to drive that cities are unable to properly densify without giving up parking spots and driving lanes.
In Toronto, there are currently thousands of unsold shoebox condos that nobody actually wants. For a decade, they've been maximizing unit numbers instead of building housing that people can actually use, and I think it's finally reached a breaking point.
Developers are trying to wait this out instead of undercutting each other in a race to the bottom, but I don't think it'll work this time. No one wanted them in the first place, but they bought because they had no other options. Today, people aren't buying them, and it's not because they (still) don't want them, it's because they can no longer afford them.
If you want more affordable housing, prices have to drop, and a market correction is an essential part of the solution. It will solve itself, but it takes a while to convince sellers that they need to accept a lower price.
I didn't think I had to point out that was a joke. I'm aware we're not actually running out of land.
I don't even think Lex Luthor was saying we're running out of land? Just that it's a finite resource. Unlike iphones (which, technically, there's an upper limit, and I think we'll either have more pressing issues societally than those limits before we reach them, or societally we won't care anymore lol).
Except most people aren't doing that at all! Even the cheapest houses are generally so fucking expensive these days in most markets that most people can't afford to buy one anymore. This isn't about efficiency gains and reallocation of funds at all, it's just the opposite. It's a result of the middle class slowly disappearing thanks to wage stagnation.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
Thanks for the links. Read the Pew one, but only skimmed the EPI one for now. My first instinct was that society's move to a double income household as the default really hurts unmarried people. But that's probably wrong, as the chart here doesn't line up and doesn't show as large of a change as I would expect if it were the case.
Looking at the breakdown of demographics of those that lost, it seems like a college education matters a lot.
And since men have been trending downward in enrollments since at least 1970, that tracks better.(EDIT: See below comment for correction!) Back to the Pew article, I would bet that all the declining demographics are mostly composed of men. They're not keeping up with increasingly tough education requirements.Anyway, to the topic at hand (housing affordability), you say that most people aren't buying homes, but the home ownership range has been in the same range as in the 80s. I know that "homeownership rate" is defined by the government as percentage of homes that are owner-occupied, instead of the percentage of adults that are homeowners, so if I can find a better source I'll link it. However, since the average household size has not increased, but decreased since the 1980s, it seems like this is a fine statistic to rely on.
Men's enrollment relative to women has trended down, but completion and enrollment in college has trended upwards for men. ~25% of men and women had a bachelors in 1995, but in 2024 that was 37% of men and 47% of women.
Ah thanks, I got that so wrong. Figuring out how to strike through text now..
By definition, prices are set based on what the market will tolerate. Goods are listed for a price that'll sell. Even if a £4 million flat is unaffordable to you, someone is buying it or else it wouldn't be listed at that price.
In Canada especially, home production and supply have cratered and failed to keep up with increasing demand.
This phrase should send a chill up your spine - if something is true "by definition" then it is true regardless of what the world looks like; it means you're making a semantic statement disconnected from reality.
Housing often doesn't sell (or rent) at market rate - a big one is that renting at a low price will decrease the on-paper value of the house for mortgage purposes, while leaving it vacant will not. I'm not talking about tenant damages here, I'm talking about the mechanism by which banks infer the value of your property.
Anyway, point is, if you take a very highly leveraged mortgage and then rent low enough, the home will be reevaluated to less than the cost of the mortgage, and the banks might decide to repossess your home. This results in landlords being forced to rent above market rates.
There are plenty of effects like this (the big one being inflexible demand - people will regularly go into debt and skip meals to keep rent paid), any definition that treats housing as a normal market good is flawed.
Housing is a market by all economic definitions. Everything you've mentioned are 100% factors in the market price of housing and would come up in ECON 102 discussions of why supply and demand are never perfectly aligned.
Homes and storefronts staying empty is rare even in the most restrictive markets in the world. It absolutely happens for the reasons you mentioned, but it's a common myth that there's some huge supply that's simply not responding to market forces.
In the micro, a storefront might not be rented out at a lower rate due to a bank's mortgage terms specifying a minimum rent, but at the macro level other property owners will respond and adjust accordingly. The laws of supply and demand still apply here.
I can say that in my experience in the Bay Area, there are entire blocks of 5 over 1 construction with entirely empty retail space on the ground floor. The zoning and construction requirements push for retail space to be available on the ground floor, but the developers build only with an eye to the (more profitable) housing on the upper floors, expecting to break even without the retail space. So you see blocks where the retail space has been empty for a literal decade. Yes, this is a distortion of the market due to the relative incentives for retail and residential construction, but when you say that storefronts staying empty is rare in even the most restrictive markets in the world it simply doesn't match my experience. The landlords are happy to profit off the residential and avoid any administrative costs of renting out the retail areas at a rate that could be sustained by a retail business in that space.
Similarly, my city has a tax on empty rental property, trying to ensure that housing is used as much as possible rather than being left empty while it's used as an investment vehicle. But there's an exemption for housing undergoing work sufficient to make it uninhabitable. This has led to a couple percent of all the homes in my neighborhood having stalled out mid-refurbishment for unknown reasons. And so now the land is appreciating in value, but the property value (and thus tax) is much lower. Again, this is a distortion due to regulation, but I've seen houses sit empty for 20 years because the land is appreciating in value and the owners don't want to manage it.
California is uniquely fucked by proposition 13 essentially freezing property tax rates. San Francisco is also one of the most NIMBY cities in the US (which is why it's the birthplace of YIMBYism).
5-over-1's get built because they come with guaranteed foot traffic for the businesses at ground level. They're excellent mixed use developments which support exactly the kind of urbanism America needs more of. The retail spaces are usually anchors that subsidize the housing, depending on the project. It's not uncommon for a grocery store to take the bottom floor of a 5-over-1 to make a project pencil out.
San Francisco's woes with high vacancy rates are due to a whole clusterfuck of factors that stifle development and make the cost of running a business extremely high. Employee costs are high due to the cost of housing and local regulations, and there are constant roadblocks to running an efficient business. The regulations are practically written to smother entrepreneurship (outside of corporate offices).
Some of the reasons:
"Someone" often being a corporation that then rents out the property.
That's true for only a small percentage of housing in almost all markets around the world. The majority of housing is owner-occupied. Unless you consider Singapore's 99 year leases to be corporate in nature.
Across all markets, sure, but we're talking about those markets where people generally can't afford to own a home. I'm pointing out that "the market" isn't solely made up of people who need a place to live, those people are competing with corporations and career landlords who have far more capital at their disposal.
Corporate landlords aren't the problem. NIMBYs that block new construction are the real villains.
The Netherlands banned corporate landlords, and housing prices went up (disparately impacting low-income households and increasing displacement) because they play a unique role in the housing market: https://www.stessa.com/blog/netherlands-banned-landlords/