The cost of air conditioning

The good thing about the smaller BTU model you bought is it can be plugged into a regular 110 outlet and won't require a special plug.

On Sat, 30 May 2015 00:44:57 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote in

| Using an inflation calculator, that is equal to about $850 today. We | really can live better today. We also help the economy in China. |

Yes and no. It's not all roses. There was a movie released yesterday documenting the mistreatment of people in SE Asia that allows us to buy shirts and pants for less than the cost of the material:

I've also seen documentaries about Apple's exploitation of people in China, living in dormitories like cattle, with nets on the windows to prevent suicide. Would you rather be a poisoned, overworked slave for Apple or live a subsistence life in the country? I'd prefer the latter. The workers in China don't know any better. They're enamored of glitzy materialism.

Another way of looking at that: Would you pay someone $2/day to paint your house because you knew they'd accept that pay? How about if the painter was your friend's kid? Where's the line between people who are OK to exploit and people who are not? Many would say that the people in China are lucky to get $2/day because that's good money for them. It can certainly be viewed that way, but then why are they working long hours and trying to jump out of the dormitory windows if they've hit Easy St.?

Cars are another item that hasn't gone up much in price. How did that happen? Could it have anything to do with the decimation of unions in the US?

Your AC is probably not American-made. Most manufacturing has left the US, while the bought-and- paid-for Congress greases the wheels for US corporations to set up factories in 3rd-world countries where they can ignore human rights and environmental issues. (I once read that Hewlett Packard had a factory all ready to open, over the border in Mexico, one week after NAFTA passed. I wonder how they knew to start work on it a year or two ahead of time? And now Carly Fiorina wants to be president. :) So the AC prices may be good for you, but what about the people who can't get by on two minimum wage jobs?

The one thing that seems to keep going up dramatically is food. A tomato can cost $5/pound these days, and that's for the genetically modified ones that are always ketchup red, always tasteless, always juiceless and will never ripen. Food from Peru, Chili and Mexico is no cheaper than food from California. (I wouldn't buy it anyway, even if it were.) I'd very much like to see an honest documentary about the agriculture industry in Peru. Maybe it's honest. Maybe it's US corporate imperialism destroying the culture and environment of another country. I really have no idea. What I do know is that they're producing an awfully lot of food for the US market that didn't used to exist.

I don't mean to criticize you. I just bought some new shorts last week at Target for next-to-nothing. And I bought linen-cotton shirts at Sears, made in Bangladesh. But we shouldn't forget that while we enjoy our good luck there are millions of poor people supporting our lifestyle. Anyone who's travelled out of the US should be aware of that. Most of the world lives *very* poor. If "Juan Valdez" got a fair price for his coffee then we'd have to pay a lot more for ours. It's just simple math. Fortunately for us, or maybe unfortunately, we don't have to know how Juan Valdez lives in order to enjoy his coffee. It's the American myth that Herbert Marcuse so colorfully called the Toilet Assumption: If you don't see it then it's not there. :)

Sure, when you look at the US/China trade deficit, it wont be too much longer until the US is broke and your spawn will be slaves to the Chinese. Nice!

A well thought out post, I have to say. It makes a person feel like such an insignificant speck on the face of the Earth because we don't always have the choices we want, and while we as individuals have to do the best we can to take care of ourselves, at times, in the process of doing that we end up having to buy our "stuff" from countries who practically have slave labor wages. The label may say "made in Bangladesh", but who really knows when they buy such a product if that's a good or bad thing? Even if we did know what it meant, we still have to make our dollars scream.

What time period are you using? I bought a Toyota in 2007 and replaced it in 2011 after an unfortunate encounter with a snow plow. The second was a few thousand more even after subtracting the cost of the radio the first one was lacking.

On a longer time frame, the equivalent of a $2000 1957 Chevrolet 210 would put you up in the mid-20's today.

Probably true. I am unaware of any US made room air conditioners though. What do you suggest?

How do you mean? The lower price may make it easier for them to buy. OTOH, these units used to be made in Edison New Jersey and my company sold them $1million a year in parts. Business gone.

I'm not sure who to blame. I was at the supplier meetings at Frigidaire when they showed us the competing units made in Korea at the time. Get the price down or we can't sell them. As a group, all the suppliers cut prices and kept it going for a few more years. Then the inevitable happened and the plant closed. With US labor both in their own plant and the vendor's plants the cost was too high to compete.

The consumer could buy a foreign made product cheaper so they voted with their dollars.

Right now the US dollar is very strong. That's good right? It is good if you are traveling abroad. Go to Canada and vacation at a 20% discount. Oh, two of our largest customers are in Canada and the choose not to pay us a 30% premium. At least two jobs lost in my plant.

Two reasons. Crops from California are not doing well because of the weather. Reason #2 is we want peaches in February. Many people have no idea what real fruit tastes like.

I share in your observation. I've said the same thing about the cost of window AC units then and now. You think a 60's AC, 6000 BTU was $129 and you might be right. But I thought they were over $200 back then. Now you can get them for $100, plus our dollars are worth a fraction of what they used to be. The ones today are also much lighter. IDK of any made in the USA anymore either.

Grumble... I was going to mention the Fr*****ch company which used to heavily advertise they were "made in America", but I hadn't heard those commercials in a while and, per Wikipedia:

"In 2008, the company moved the bulk of its production to Mexico."

sigh

| | > So the AC prices may be good for you, but what about | > the people who can't get by on two minimum wage jobs? | | How do you mean? The lower price may make it easier for them to buy.

Yes, but now they don't have a job. We used to have tariffs to keep domestic products on par with foreign goods. Now the multi-national corporations are competing by finding the cheapest labor to exploit. People like Thomas Friedman at the NYT would have us believe that's inevitable "globalism", but that's just an excuse.

| Two reasons. Crops from California are not doing well because of the | weather. Reason #2 is we want peaches in February. Many people have no | idea what real fruit tastes like.

I'm not talking about current produce or peaches from Chile. As I said, I wouldn't buy produce from Chile, anyway. I don't trust the way it's grown in foreign countries. I won't buy it at all from stores that don't label the place of origin. Tomatoes right now, from greenhouses in the next state, are $4 and $5/pound. They haven't been getting cheaper in the summer. Brussel sprouts have gone from $2 to $3.50 in the last 4-5 years. They almost never go back down after they've once gone up. Fish and beef are prohibitive. Cheese has gone much higher. The raisins I buy have gone up 50% in the past two years or so. I haven't done any sort of scientific survey, but it seems to me that food just keeps jumping, based on what I pay for things that I've been buying all along.