Items that are cheaper now than in 1999
It’s no secret that prices are rising almost everywhere. But did you know that some consumer items are now more affordable than ever?
Food, petrol, power... simply putting a roof over our heads. The price of everything is going up and it sometimes feels like the cost of living is spiralling out of control.
But there is some good news. Thanks to the laws of supply and demand, and technological advances, some things are the same price or even cheaper than they were 10, 20, or even 30 years ago.
And that’s in actual dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
Let’s start with my own experience. In 1986, I flew from Brisbane to London Heathrow on Qantas for a price of $1,700 flying economy return. It took a lot of scrimping and saving to get that money together – it’s the same as trying to raise $5,000 today.
According to an airfares search engine, I can make that same trip in May 2024 – albeit with multiple stops along the way and a combination of airlines, including Qantas on one sector – for $1,720 in today’s money. China Eastern can do it for $1,505.
(The day after I researched this, I was served an online advertisement for a Japan Airlines deal, Brisbane to London return – via Tokyo and Singapore – for $1699.)
Although airfares went up steeply after the pandemic, they are now settling down to the lower prices afforded by increased competition (especially from low-cost carriers), improvements in airline efficiency, and the deregulation of aviation in many parts of the world.
The cost of consumer electronics has also mostly decreased in recent decades, while the technology itself just gets better and better.
For example, flat-screen smart TVs, which were once a luxury item costing thousands of dollars, are now available at a fraction of that price with significantly better “smart” features such as online streaming.
The price of personal computers has also remained relatively flat even though current models are far superior in terms of speed, memory capacity, and usefulness than in the past. Anyone who has ever had to edit video will know exactly how much better modern laptops are than their predecessors.
Data storage for those computers has also dropped to a tiny fraction of its previous price – be it for physical media such as hard drives (thanks to solid-state technology replacing mechanical magnetic units) or in the cloud (which wasn’t even a thing 20 years ago).
I remember having to backup and delete files from my web-based email account to remain within an upper limit that was less than a single photograph or short audio file would occupy now.
Computer software is cheaper, too. However, many developers have moved to a subscription model where you no longer own the apps you use, you just lease them. This suits the makers of ubiquitous, and all-but-essential products such as the Microsoft Office suite.
Music streaming has meant you can listen to an unlimited number of songs from millions of artists for the equivalent cost of a single CD or LP back in the day. Of course, once again, you don’t really own the product. It’s a similar story with movies and television shows.
As we’ve moved towards greater use of renewable energy in the past 20 years, solar panels have taken a huge price tumble.
Improved manufacturing techniques, increased demand, and big advances in photovoltaic technology have contributed to making solar energy more accessible and affordable.
This decrease in price, plus government incentives to switch, has been a key factor in the growing adoption of solar power by households and businesses alike.
That’s an impressive array of items – and I’m not even including those products, such as some toys, furniture, and clothes, that are cheaper but of lesser quality than in the past.
The reason these things are cheaper comes down to increased competition (although that is eroding in some industries), tech advances, economies of scale (the greater the demand, the lower the price), and globalisation, which has allowed the development of cheaper and more efficient supply chains.
The sad news is that while many of those factors also apply to the necessities of life, we are not seeing the same pricing phenomenon in our supermarkets.
