rekmeyata

Innovations don't always drop prices. Cars are a huge example as in the case you brought up; in the mid 60's the average car cost $2,750, with inflation that equals to $25,000 today, the average price of a new car today is $40,000. Some things, like home electronics and appliances, you can buy cheaper today than inflation would factor in, but you also get a much shorter life expectancy, appliances for example lasted an average of 30 years in the 60's, now we're looking at 12 years. And with electronics you are not getting the quality of the sound you used to get, not to mention the lack of long life we once enjoyed, if you want a really good system you have to fork over some serious cash.

While computers have indeed fallen sharply in price from the late 80's, that's due to more robots assembling the majority of the computers today, and the cost to make microprocessors etc has fallen sharply as well as a result of that.

Since this is a cycling forum let's examine that. A 1983 Trek 760, their top of the line racing bike, cost $808 including top of the line components; now to get a top of the line Trek, with mechanical shifting to keep them similar, the Madone SL6 will cost you $4,729, but with inflation we should only be paying $2,332 for that bike, and the SL6 is using Ultegra, not the top of line DA components for a comparison against top of the line Suntour Superbe the Trek 760 came with. Today's bikes are not handmade like they used to be either.

Some innovations have indeed been good and caused prices to fall in relation to inflation, but some have not caused prices to fall and in fact have caused prices to rise well above what the inflation rate should be, while at the same time getting inferior product life most of the time from what we use to get.