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. Read more →

A lot of films …

Man, I’ve watched a lot of films since getting a Netflix subscription: in two and a third years, I’ve seen 677 movies — over 5½ a week! For most of that time, I’ve been on the 8-at-a-time plan, and thus have paid a bit less than $1,200, averaging $1.76 per movie. It’s amazingly cheap. Read more →

A lot of films …

Man, I’ve watched a lot of films since getting a Netflix subscription: in two and a third years, I’ve seen 677 movies — over 5½ a week! For most of that time, I’ve been on the 8-at-a-time plan, and thus have paid a bit less than $1,200, averaging $1.76 per movie. It’s amazingly cheap. Read more →