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Comment on WTF Happened in 1971?

Go watch some price is right episodes on YouTube — one from each year of the 1970s. It’s astounding how much the prices drastically change on automobiles and food just over a year or two.

Strangely, basic clothes washers, dryers, refrigerators, and stoves seem have the same pricing as today.

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Kalothar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s not really that strange when considering cars have been progressively held to higher safety standards for carrying a human being, while those other devices have not.

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- Haui@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  You are leaving out the fact that manufacturing methods have drastically increased in sophistication and machines are building most of the cars today, not the costs of the cars have increased but the earnings of the companies, household items have drastically changed in safety standards as well (fuses, electronics, handbooks) compared to their relatively low complexity.
  
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  - Kalothar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah, I’m not really the best person to speak to this myself as I don’t know a lot about the auto industry. It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, I just wish we had a more equitable system to avoid artificial price increases.
    
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    Haui@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I agree. I worked in the car industry a couple of years and unions (in germany) ensure that workers get the same (okayish) wage everywhere while car companies ensure that everyone who is not covered by unions gets fuckall.
    
    I also worked for an independent contractor once. They were bled dry by a major manufacturer while that manufacturer was raking in billions in profits.
    
    We need a similar system like the german paragraph 138 bgb:
    
    In particular, a legal transaction is void whereby someone, taking advantage of another’s predicament, inexperience, lack of judgment or significant weakness of will, promises or grants themselves or a third party financial advantages in return for a service that are conspicuously disproportionate to the service.
    
    This afaik only concerns citizens, not companies and/or is not taking in financial disproportionate situations. Especially small companies are in a disadvantage, which leads to our dystopian economic system atm.
    
    If we had a law that specifically prohibits large companies to use their size to rob smaller companies, that would probably solve a lot of our problems. Smaller companies are not without failure but they are still led by individuals and not necessarily money making machines.
    
    Have a good one.
    
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