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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

It's weird how certain things have remained the same, or even cheaper when accounting for inflation.

I've bought an $899 MacBook Air. I've bought a $229 65" TV. $20 handheld emulator. A lot of tools and random things from Amazon are still the same price.

But the house I bought was double what the one was in 2018. The car I haven't bought would be up 50%. Insurance costs are way up. Phone bill is the same.

Groceries are way up in general, certain things like meat basically doubled but Yogurt and cheese is still about the same price. Junk food like soda, cookies, and chips are double (thankfully I don't buy much). Potatoes, onions, peppers are still the same price.

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The stuff you mentioned that remained cheap is coming from China/Asia. It is in fact getting cheaper than ever for electronics.

> It's weird how certain things have remained the same, or even cheaper when accounting for inflation

Cars for example, at least in the base trims.

• My 2006 Honda CR-V in the lowest trim level with AWD was $23k, which would be $37k today. That's $3k more than a 2026 lowest trim AWD CR-V costs today at my nearest Honda dealer.

• The last new car I bought before that was a 1989 Honda Civic sedan. Its price in today's dollars comes out about the same as a new 2026 Civic.

Some research suggests my experience is not a fluke. Base trims with comparable features (e.g., AWD) have been about the same in constant dollars for at least 40ish years for most mass market cars.

iPhone is screaming: Hello, ahem, I was priced $499 in 2007 and $1100 now

There has been a marked quality improvement, it’s not apples to apples

Ok.. so $499 was too much back in 2007.

With 2% target inflation prices double every 17 years, so that’s not too far off.

1.02**17 = 1.400..., whereas 1.02**35 = 1.99...

At 2% inflation prices increase by 40% every 17 years, and it takes 35 years for them to double. At 3% (closer to real inflation), prices would double every 23 years: 1.03**23 = 1.97...

$499 was the carrier subsidized price in 2007, not the true price.

The true price would likely have been around $999. The 6 was $199 with subsidy; the 7 was $699 without.

Nope. At least in the USA, they were carrier locked not subsidized[1]. The 3G was 199$ when subsidized[2].

According to www.usinflationcalculator.com, 500$ would be ~780$ in modern money. Close to the price of the base iPhone 17 and 300+ dollars difference when compared to the smaller of the pro models. So I suppose its price stability is based on the target you pick. If it were me, I'd target against the 1000$ iPhone Air.

1:My personal iPhone 1 never saw an att sim. It was purchased at an apple store.

2:https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/09/3g-iphone-comes-with-2-yea...

As you said, they were carrier locked. Apple got paid for that carrier lock. That's a subsidy. A weird one, but still a subsidy.

By that definition, every iPhone is subsidized. Google pays to be the default search engine and subsidizes iPhone.

I meant a contracted subsidy where the user sticks with att or whatever for $n$ years.

iPhone 16e is $599 and would have been the best phone on the market a few years ago.

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