Robert A. Uhl

In which goods get cheaper faster than inflation

I was recently going through my bookshelf, looking for books to trim, when I came across Mark Bowden’s excellent Black Hawk Down; it happened to have a receipt inside, from November 2008 when I bought it (almost exactly a decade to the day — strange how coïncidences happen sometimes!). I noticed that it was $13.95 back then, which wasn’t terribly cheap in 2008 ($16.32 in 2018 dollars, for a paperback). I was curious how much it’d cost today: turns out that Amazon have it for $13.34, less than in non-inflation-adjusted dollars than it was a decade ago! The march of economic progress is a Good Thing™.

As an aside, the receipt was from Borders (remember Borders?). I miss that place …


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