America says it has got poorer. That's rich

[Ideologue]

I think I'd be very happy in Vietnam, as long as I had Arc Light support.

[MadImmortalMan]

I had this plan about selling flag colored bikinis at World Cup games. Come to Brazil and help me with that. 

[Ideologue]

Sold.  City of God made it look pretty fun.

[mongers]

I had this plan about selling flag colored bikinis at World Cup games. Come to Brazil and help me with that. 

This man is a genius, work with him. 

Maybe make the bikinis a wee bit small and open a complimentary waxing saloon.

[DGuller]

I had this plan about selling flag colored bikinis at World Cup games. Come to Brazil and help me with that. 

I can help potential customers with putting them on.

[Jacob]

I had this plan about selling flag colored bikinis at World Cup games. Come to Brazil and help me with that. 

I can help potential customers with putting them on.

Great! We'll only charge you $10 per customer.

[DGuller]

I had this plan about selling flag colored bikinis at World Cup games. Come to Brazil and help me with that. 

I can help potential customers with putting them on.

Great! We'll only charge you $10 per customer.

Deal.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't think they provide the customers. 

[Iormlund]

I love when people put forward random statistical facts they don't understand to prove something. Cars are more powerful, yes. That's because they are a lot heavier as well.

They are, but nevertheless, today's mid-range Honda is going to smoke a fancy BMW from 1980.

Doubtful. The E32 for example could go over 250 km/h if you removed the limiter (German cars still use that limit today).


BTW I'm not saying modern cars are worse than older cars. They have come a long way in safety and a lot of other issues. I'm just saying that quoting random pieces of data can undermine the point you're trying to make if you don't know what you're talking about.

[Camerus]

FYI, he was in a car club in college.   

[Iormlund]

The author of the article?

[The Minsky Moment]

Not having it break nearly as often?  And safety features are pretty valuable, if you put a dollar figure on your life and do the calculations.  If you value your life at, say, $10 million, then the cost of the risk of dying in a car accident today is about 10 cents per mile.  If you drive 20,000 miles a year, that's $2000 a year.  I can't find the statistics for 1982, but I think a conservative assumption is that the death rate per 100 million miles was triple of that.  So improvement in safety alone makes you $4,000 per year richer.

There are probably other reasons why death rates are lower other than auto safety features (e.g. behavioral shifts in seatbelt usage and drinking, tougher DUI enforcement) but I won't quibble with the numbers. 

So there is a sense in which people are "richer" because there cars are safer.  But that "wealth" comes in the form of additional years of life, which only exacerbates the problem of coming up with sufficient dollar income to sustain a decent standard of living - including the dollar income to buy new (and safer) cars as oppose to extend out the life and/or defer maintenance of their old car (perhaps beyond safety margins).

[The Minsky Moment]

Another way of making the same point more generally is that although one can put a dollar value on hedonic improvement, that kind of improvement doesn't necessarily substitute for the flexibility of money income.  The fact that technology and safety improvements may extend life an extra 5-10 years is of great value, but it doesn't solve the problem of how to save enough money for retirement - in fact it makes that problem more difficult.  The fact that communications technology is far better then 30 years ago is really dandy, but you can't eat cell phones and you can't live in them.  Car technology has advanced but that technology doesn't put gas in the tank. 

[garbon]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57549292-1/edible-iphone-case-melts-in-your-mouth-not-on-your-phone/

http://www.switched.com/2009/10/17/artist-proposes-edible-cell-phones-to-feed-the-world/

[Ideologue]

Here's another wrinkle, Joan: the cost of outright death is substantially lower than the cost of substantially impaired life.  I wonder if the increased number of $250,000 medical bills offsets the diminution of $5000 medical bills.

(Or I may be way off base here.  I've got no statistics, but it makes sense that safety improvements may save lives, but don't in many instances save health and function.)