Yes yes yes! Haptic feedback is essential. These damn touchscreens where you have to concentrate on something off the road to, you know, open the glove box. Come on Tesla.
We have a Tesla and a Chevy Bolt. I vastly prefer the Bolt because I don't need to mess with a screen to open the glove box, change the temp etc.
My masters is in human factors (though I don’t do it anymore, it still in my head). One of my coworkers went to test drive a Tesla a few, at least 4, years ago and came back talking about how horrible the touchscreen is from an HF perspective. It looks slick, but going through menus and options to open the glove box is like, not an improvement. He said he would never buy a Tesla because of this.
I haven't seen actual data on the price of things now vs the price of things when we were kids, but speaking to the comments about how people did a lot of things when they were kids that they can't do with their own families now - that's actually not my experience, nor was it of most people I grew up knowing. I think that was a class thing. We never went to things like baseball games or concerts - I think my first MLB game was as an adult and I bought my first concert ticket myself in 1998. I had a season pass to Six Flags for a few years as a teen but I bought that myself with my babysitting money - prior to that, I'd been there maybe 1-2x with my mom on our yearly "solo date" but never as a family. Vacations were camping or a road trip, and we rarely went out to eat. Etc.
I don't think those things were cheap back then - I think rather, families who had a decent income might be able to afford doing that stuff AND living a decent middle class life, whereas now the costs of housing, childcare, student loans, healthcare, and vehicles has outpaced wages so much that paying for basic life expenses AND entertainment for a family is just not as doable on the types of jobs that our parents worked.
I mean the prices are also a joke these days - but I just don't know that many of these things were EVER "affordable" for the middle or lower middle class.
Post by MixedBerryJam on Jul 17, 2023 15:13:51 GMT -5
I’m not telling you all to move to DC but I love and take full advantage of the free Smithsonians. And the splurge is driving in and paying for parking guilt free.
I’m not telling you all to move to DC but I love and take full advantage of the free Smithsonians. And the splurge is driving in and paying for parking guilt free.
I know I’m quoting myself. I meant this to be an ETA but when I get FOMO I get it from here, not social media. You guys have some very expensive taste!
I’m not telling you all to move to DC but I love and take full advantage of the free Smithsonians. And the splurge is driving in and paying for parking guilt free.
I lived 3 stops from the district, could walk to the station. Worked one stop away. We'd regularly just go for a couple hours. The splurge was all the food and drink
On the concert tickets topic, I’m the dork that has saved every ticket stub
11/4/1989 - REM in a large college basketball area, section 123 (so, lower level, not floor), $17 8/8/1994 - Lollapalooza $31 7/10/1994 - Pink Floyd at RFK, section 215 (not sure the level, my memory says on the field in the back) $32.50 4/21/2000 - Bruce Springsteen, section 202 in an NBA/NHL arena (it was high) $37.50
Looks like somewhere around 2005 I switched from the scrapbook to a large pile, I’m too lazy to keep going far, but I did pull out: 11/20/2009 - Bruce Springsteen at Baltimore’s area (which is smaller than an NBA/NHL arena) $98. This was a lower level seat, but 161% more than 9.5 years earlier.
This has me intrigued. The data analyst in me wants to input these into a spreadsheet and do some analysis on them 😂
RE: Why everything is high end - Companies can make less of it, and sell it for more money, which equals more profits. The end.
I think of it like the article I read a looong time ago explaining why there were so many mattress stores around. The upshot of it was that the small stores only had to sell 2-3 mattresses to pay for all the costs associated with the store, and everything above that was gravy. Low cost, low inventory, high price points = rolling in dough
I'm goign to be really sad when our 2012 truck kicks the bucket and we no longer have a vehicle with a CD player. The process of buying our little camry was fucking stupid, and we ended up with a cheaper car than we'd budgeted for because we refused to pay for a package that included the upgraded 12" infotainment screen and giant rims because THEY MAKE THE CAR WORSE STOP IT. I'd have liked leather seats, but once you got to that level there were a fuckton of extraneous bells and whistles I didn't want or need.
I do have some level of hope that the touch screens in cars will start swinging back the other way. it's one of the (many) things that NHTSA has dropped the ball on, but those fucking screens are less safe than a knob or a button you can use without looking and they need to go away, at the very least for things like controlling the A/C and heat.
Yes yes yes! Haptic feedback is essential. These damn touchscreens where you have to concentrate on something off the road to, you know, open the glove box. Come on Tesla.
Why are you opening (and presumably rummaging through) the glovebox while you’re driving though?
I can see the complaint about windshield wipers and lights. But the glovebox?? Lol
Yes yes yes! Haptic feedback is essential. These damn touchscreens where you have to concentrate on something off the road to, you know, open the glove box. Come on Tesla.
Why are you opening (and presumably rummaging through) the glovebox while you’re driving though?
I can see the complaint about windshield wipers and lights. But the glovebox?? Lol
I think it was (that the glove box) the weirdest of the things. But also, you’ve never reached over and grabbed the tissues out of your glove box whole driving? And you can generally do that without taking your eyes if the rod from muscle memory and haptic feedback. You reach over and feel the button. No eyes required.
We didn’t do anything when I was a kid. Maybe bowling 1-2 times per year when we visited my grandparents who lived near a military base and had access. Mini golf only when it was someone’s birthday party. Ate out basically never. Disney twice for single day each time. Never other theme parks.
While I do feel like these items have outpaced inflation, I also feel like there’s more of an expectation or more social pressures to do these things often.
But yes, even things like minor league baseball or a meal at a fast-casual place are shockingly expensive for our family of 3.
Why are you opening (and presumably rummaging through) the glovebox while you’re driving though?
I can see the complaint about windshield wipers and lights. But the glovebox?? Lol
I think it was (that the glove box) the weirdest of the things. But also, you’ve never reached over and grabbed the tissues out of your glove box whole driving? And you can generally do that without taking your eyes if the rod from muscle memory and haptic feedback. You reach over and feel the button. No eyes required.
On the concert tickets topic, I’m the dork that has saved every ticket stub
11/4/1989 - REM in a large college basketball area, section 123 (so, lower level, not floor), $17 8/8/1994 - Lollapalooza $31 7/10/1994 - Pink Floyd at RFK, section 215 (not sure the level, my memory says on the field in the back) $32.50 4/21/2000 - Bruce Springsteen, section 202 in an NBA/ NHL arena (it was high) $37.50
Looks like somewhere around 2005 I switched from the scrapbook to a large pile, I’m too lazy to keep going far, but I did pull out: 11/20/2009 - Bruce Springsteen at Baltimore’s area (which is smaller than an NBA/NHL arena) $98. This was a lower level seat, but 161% more than 9.5 years earlier.
This has me intrigued. The data analyst in me wants to input these into a spreadsheet and do some analysis on them 😂
I’ll see if I can find mh’s 1964 MSG Beatles ticket. I want to say the face value was 575. As in five dollars and seventy five cents! He kept EVERYTHING. I saved quite a bit less but I nearly fell over when I saw the price on that ticket!
So...yes, inflation, etc etc. But that's not really the same as the kind of thing that they're talking about in the OP link though. That businesses are focusing on their upscale offerings because there's enough demand to make their money without "catering to the masses" so fuck offering a cheap ticket with less perks, everythign is just $100+ out of the gate.
The car issue where companies aren't even MAKING an affordable little hatchback that still has power windows. The issue where every condo being built is a "luxury unit" because who in their right mind spends millions upon millions on a development project to build just like....houses. theyr'e all LUXURY houses. (unless forced to build MPDU's, and even then...doesn't help the middle class folks above those income cutoffs who just want a normal place to live with 3 BR's and 2.5 baths and a normal kitchen) The (less of a pressing) issue where there's no dollar or $5 tables at a casino because it's all $100 min bets. Movie theaters have real food and reclining seats instead of cheap ass popcorn and terrible folding chairs and tickets cost $25+ instead of $12. (hell...we had a dollar theater when I was a teen. man, that place was STICKY. but cheap! we went all the time! Even in the time of streaming I'd still go! Movie theaters are fun dammit)
The actual offerings have changed in a lot of ways, and the entry level option with fewer bells and whistles just doesn't exist anymore.
So inflation is why the normal janky minigolf place at the shore with the broken dino is $150 for a family of 4. But this other issue...this weird luxury is now standard thing, is why topgolf is growing like crazy.
(@ some whining re: the inflation thing though - Shorti is slowly outgrowing the kid menu and Sizzli isn't far behind her, and OMG it's a big sticker shock to go from two adult meals and two kid meals to four fucking adult meals when we go out on top of the general inflation of food/restaurant prices.)
I love your mention of a “normal kitchen.” Yeah, I don’t need a pot filler AND a bar sink in addition to a regular sink. My mom has three refrigerators! (An apartment sized one for drinks, an apartment sized one she turned into a standing freezer, and a French door fridge.) I don’t need a formal dining room, a breakfast room, and island bar seating.
It reminds me of the FOMO inspired by stuff like HGTV. This calendar year the “rock the block” homes all STARTED with values of a few million dollars, and once renovated they ended up being like $3 million dollar cul de sac houses in Colorado. I just finished watching Battle on the Beach, which is basically the same thing - teams of designers renovating similar houses, just on a beach - and they all ended up appraising at over $1 million for 2 bedroom vacation homes on stilts in Alabama! Granted, with outdoor kitchens and showers and super fancy kitchens with 2 dishwashers and spa bathrooms, etc. etc.
I dream of a rambling, luxurious house as much as anyone, but the space I have works pretty well, even without a dishwasher.
Why are you opening (and presumably rummaging through) the glovebox while you’re driving though?
I can see the complaint about windshield wipers and lights. But the glovebox?? Lol
I think it was (that the glove box) the weirdest of the things. But also, you’ve never reached over and grabbed the tissues out of your glove box whole driving? And you can generally do that without taking your eyes if the rod from muscle memory and haptic feedback. You reach over and feel the button. No eyes required.
I’ve never seen someone open the glove box while driving! Nor have I seen anyone put anything but the car owners manual and registration and insurance cards in it. I’m way too short to even consider that, but I’m tiny lol! Even reaching the radio dials and touchscreen means extending my arm entirely and sometimes leaning over a bit yo reach.
Post by picksthemusic on Jul 17, 2023 17:51:57 GMT -5
My brother and I were just talking about this re: our childhood and how much we didn't do as a family. My dad was an architect for the local international airport and made decent money. He got farm subsidies from his dad's farm. We did have a house that he owned, and he had his Corvette, and we had a family car. We ate out at fast food places (think Arby's and Pizza Hut) maybe twice a month? If that? McDonald's was out of the question unless I was going to someone's birthday party (remember those?). Vacations? LOL.
And when my folks divorced, it was even worse. We had 'candlelight dinners' because my dad didn't pay the power bill and my mom didn't have a job. So.
All that to say, I agree that everything is more expensive, but we try to give our kids a little more than we had growing up, but we try to do things that involve coupons, discounts, or lowered prices due to day/time.
Dinner out costs are probably where I notice the biggest difference.
3 of us to get Mexican is $60, never mind if we get alcohol!
I find my sense of food costs is so strange. I don’t bat an eye if I go out with friends and it’s $25-30, that seems find for being social. But when I’m paying for 2, and it’s $40-50. That I notice. No logical sense here.
Also, since I’m up the hill… it’s it like I’m flying down the road at 80mph trying to pull stuff out of my glove box. But yeah, sometime at like 15mph on a small road (after a full scan of surroundings in a place with good visibility) or at a stoplight. Still situations where needing to navigate menus versus just reaching and doing things by feel is super annoying.
Yeah no kidding. We were going to go bowling last month and went to reserve a lane. For four of us it would have been TWO HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS. So no we didn’t go. An hour at main event earlier this week cost $75. It’s absurd.
I’m not telling you all to move to DC but I love and take full advantage of the free Smithsonians. And the splurge is driving in and paying for parking guilt free.
We just went for a weekend in DC earlier this month, because of the free museums. There was no way we could have afforded hotel + meals + activities.
We didn’t do anything when I was a kid. Maybe bowling 1-2 times per year when we visited my grandparents who lived near a military base and had access. Mini golf only when it was someone’s birthday party. Ate out basically never. Disney twice for single day each time. Never other theme parks.
We only traveled to places where we could stay with family -- we went to Toronto to stay with my mom's cousin three or four times.
Growing up in an immigrant family, we rarely went on vacation and ate out just as rarely. We did do day trips over the summer sometimes. My parents managed to take us to Disney twice, that was nice. One of my dad's friends lived in a suburb of Baltimore during my middle school years. We would often go stay at their house from Friday - Sunday and go into DC on Saturday afternoon to check out a museum. Summer meant extreme boredom at home because we also had no cable TV, very few things to entertain myself with, no money for any summer activities except swim lessons once a week at the Y. My husband grew up similarly except they had dinners at Sizzler or Pizza Hut occasionally and they maybe had a little more money for some local youth sports and tennis since he was an only child.
@@ Once we became adults with jobs and freedom, we did all the travel experiences. And now with kids, I want them to do all the things and experience all the experiences I couldn't do. Within reason, like we're not going into debt and we're not stretching our budget to the max. But we wouldn't hesitate to take the kids to the movies or out bowling if one of them requested to do that activity. Social media has nothing to do with it for us, if anything others posting their experiences and pictures gives me ideas of things to consider or avoid. I feel like I watched Taylor Swift tour the country through my social media feed. Every weekend someone in another city was posting their concert pictures so at one point I asked DD if she wanted to go. She said no, but if she had said "OMG yes" I would've tried to make it happen.
As a kid, I definitely had feelings when the other kids would talk about the new movies their parents took them to see. I'd rather my kids not experience that, I don't think that missing out built more character or made me a better person. If anything, it reminded me that I wasn't getting to experience a "normal" American childhood.
But the other part of the article doesn't bode well for when my kids are ready to drive and I can't buy them a basic car without the bells and whistles. Maybe I'll hand them down one of our older cars but it still means that I will be forced to spend more to buy myself a new car because there are no other choices unless society and economics change by then. Which who knows. Things feel very excessive these days on all fronts, maybe we're headed for some big changes ahead.
We have a Tesla and a Chevy Bolt. I vastly prefer the Bolt because I don't need to mess with a screen to open the glove box, change the temp etc.
My masters is in human factors (though I don’t do it anymore, it still in my head). One of my coworkers went to test drive a Tesla a few, at least 4, years ago and came back talking about how horrible the touchscreen is from an HF perspective. It looks slick, but going through menus and options to open the glove box is like, not an improvement. He said he would never buy a Tesla because of this.
spoiler alert: he bought one a month ago. 🙄
I have never been in a Tesla before today, but my Lyft driver was driving ones. I couldn't figure out how to get out of the freaking car! Like why is it a push button!? It looks like the window button. Just because you *can* change things doesn't mean you *should*.
I hope I never have to buy a car with a touch screen. My Nissan has a screen, but it's small and it still has all the physical buttons, so the muscle memory is there.
RE-cars, we were just having this conversation with my parents. My dad doesn't want a car that has a ton of bells and whistles and yet everything is a touch screen. Saftey features are one thing, but for example, cars default to music through your phone and he just wants the radio.
I’ve never heard of a car defaulting to your phone, my H’s car is a 2022 and you still have to hit media for it to play from your phone.
rubytue - check out VW, I have a golf GTI hatchback, they make one that’s slightly bigger than the regular size gold too.
When my phone is plugged in (like to charge) the car defaults to playing music from my phone. I have to go back and physically change it to a different source. It’s super annoying, and I can’t figure out how to not make it so this. I’ve been through all the settings. It’s an Apple CarPlay thing.
I’ve never heard of a car defaulting to your phone, my H’s car is a 2022 and you still have to hit media for it to play from your phone.
rubytue - check out VW, I have a golf GTI hatchback, they make one that’s slightly bigger than the regular size gold too.
When my phone is plugged in (like to charge) the car defaults to playing music from my phone. I have to go back and physically change it to a different source. It’s super annoying, and I can’t figure out how to not make it so this. I’ve been through all the settings. It’s an Apple CarPlay thing.
OMG.
My car defaults to playing from my phone when I step into the car (charging or not) - which is fine. My standard car ride is listening to podcasts. But heaven forbid DH gets in the car. The car kicks my phone off and defaults to his. And he doesn't use his phone for music *or* podcasts. It's one of those iPhones that came with U2 on it. So we'll pick him up and suddenly the speakers will start blasting one of those songs that no one wants to hear. I can't get him to remove the songs from his phone (even though he hates U2) and I can't get the car to stop favoring him.
It's like when the kids would only say "DaDa." lol.
I feel like every new build in the NYC metro has been billed as a "luxury" house/apartment/condo/whatever ever since I was an adult. So that was in 2005,
That was a real thing at that time. A bunch of shitty landlords figured out that if they pushed out their existing tenants (through intimidation and complete neglect) they could do a bunch of "luxury" renovations, tack those onto the legal rental rates and push rent control/rent stabilized buildings out of legal protections and into the free market rates. It was brutal. (I worked some tenant protection law at the time). During the 5 years I lived in NYC, the only time someone tried to rob me, they were NYPD on the job and the only time I feared for my safety it was goons sent by my tenants' landlord.
RE-cars, we were just having this conversation with my parents. My dad doesn't want a car that has a ton of bells and whistles and yet everything is a touch screen. Saftey features are one thing, but for example, cars default to music through your phone and he just wants the radio.
I’ve never heard of a car defaulting to your phone, my H’s car is a 2022 and you still have to hit media for it to play from your phone.
rubytue - check out VW, I have a golf GTI hatchback, they make one that’s slightly bigger than the regular size gold too.
My sample size of 1 (LOL) is DH's truck, which defaults to bluetooth music.
It's also annoying because if I'm in the car with him, but his phone is the one being used since it's his profile as the driver, my phone won't play anything with sound. So I can either turn off my bluetooth to let's say hear IG stories, or I have to wear my earbuds.
I am not a fan of Toyota's interface, but I also drive a 2014 pathfinder that requires me to plug in my phone to get it to play anything.
I agree with so many points, in the article and here. Not much to add, and while obv. I blame corporations (and Reagan), I do wonder how much some of this is on consumers too. We’ve talked before about the optimization of everything and people’s obsession with everything being “the best”, which I think contributes to some of the discontinuance of basic, middle or low end options. It’s a combination of so many factors already mentioned - social media, keeping up with the Joneses, lack of other choices, technology - but at some point in my adult life, I feel like everyone moved to always wanting the best, the nicest, the most extreme, of everything. So it makes a little sense that companies moved away from base stuff. Now is it a chicken and egg situation? At least in part, I’m sure. But I’ve been frustrated with both corporations and consumers on this issue for years.
There are plenty of things that I can afford, but that isn’t even the issue to me for most of them. It’s that I don’t care about them, so I hate feeling like I have no other choice but to buy/do them, and I really hate the insinuation that I’m just being cheap or shortsighted if I don’t (the whole “you pay for quality” thing, which is really only true to an extent, IME).
This is how I somewhat justify living in a hcol haha. Probably doesn’t make sense, but I could probably spend zero dollars on entertainment for the rest of my life because there are so many free things that happen here on a daily basis. Museums, concerts, sports, classes, etc. Plus there’s public transportation so if you want to go out to the suburbs for other entertainment or the beach for the day, etc, you can get there. At least that’s how I justify paying $5300 in rent per month haha.
Except for the zoo on Wednesdays…it’s a nightmare!
I haven't seen actual data on the price of things now vs the price of things when we were kids, but speaking to the comments about how people did a lot of things when they were kids that they can't do with their own families now - that's actually not my experience, nor was it of most people I grew up knowing. I think that was a class thing. We never went to things like baseball games or concerts - I think my first MLB game was as an adult and I bought my first concert ticket myself in 1998. I had a season pass to Six Flags for a few years as a teen but I bought that myself with my babysitting money - prior to that, I'd been there maybe 1-2x with my mom on our yearly "solo date" but never as a family. Vacations were camping or a road trip, and we rarely went out to eat. Etc.
I don't think those things were cheap back then - I think rather, families who had a decent income might be able to afford doing that stuff AND living a decent middle class life, whereas now the costs of housing, childcare, student loans, healthcare, and vehicles has outpaced wages so much that paying for basic life expenses AND entertainment for a family is just not as doable on the types of jobs that our parents worked.
I mean the prices are also a joke these days - but I just don't know that many of these things were EVER "affordable" for the middle or lower middle class.
I agree with this 100%.
@@
My parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, and on top of that, we only had one car. All of the activities that are being mentioned as too expensive to do now, were always too expensive or too difficult to make happen, for families like mine. And when we did them, usually via free or reduced price tickets, there were no add ons. The ticket was the “thing”, and we did whatever was part of admission. So, a movie, but not a movie, popcorn, candy and a drink. A baseball game was the game, shaking hands with a mascot, and the free program/scorecard. I can remember going to play mini-golf only one time as a kid, when all my cousins were going and my mom felt pressured into taking us too and she could barely afford just the golf. She was horrified that the cost included one round of mini golf and then the last cup was the one that took your ball at the end so you couldn’t go play more holes. I don’t have kids, so I don’t do a lot of the traditional kid activities like this now, but even the ones I do, it’s kind of ingrained in me that I don’t buy a lot of extra stuff or food/beverage. I can afford it, but I don’t see that as part of the experience the way a lot of people do. I can probably count on one hand the number of concerts I’ve gone to where I’ve bought a drink, for example. I still enjoy going and have a great time, but I am definitely always going to be the person who eats and has a drink beforehand or stops for a nightcap at a normal bar afterward.
I found myself thinking the other day, how do I know so many people who have been to Iceland?! I'm seeing so many pics on FB that are people in Mexico, Europe and Iceland, lol. It's because of this place--and running in way more bougie circles than I grew up in, and actually still having a connection to people I haven't seen in person in years, some of whom are single and child-free and do quite a bit of travel.
Growing up, I don't think I knew anyone who went on an overseas trip, let alone multiple over multiple years. Most people didn't even have passports or get on a plane. It was a big deal the first time my family flew to Florida instead of driving, when I was in middle school.
I grew up in a rural Ohio town and people did camping or driving vacations, often to a relative's lake house. Church camping trips were pretty common & lower cost, too. My grandparents were wealthy and had both a lake house in Michigan and a condo in FL, so we could drive to both. I didn't take a vacation that *wasn't* to visit family (and stay with them so hotel costs weren't a factor) until I was working post-college, and it was within driving distance because I couldn't afford a flight.
Re: Cars. I've been thinking about the lack of lower-cost cars a lot more lately, because we've been looking at getting a third car that our kids will drive. The used car market is still nuts, and DH has been looking for months. It really feels like there is a significant bifurcation. You can get a very old beater with 100K-150K+ miles on it for around $10K or less, or you can get something lightly used and a year or two old for $20K-$22K, which is more expensive (and nicer, lol) than we really want for a teen driver. There aren't a lot of options in between and they get snapped up fast.
But I think there's something structural about that, that has been coming for awhile. Cars have been getting more expensive for years, so loan terms have been getting longer. That means it's a lot harder to find a middle-of-the-road, three or four year old car with say, 30-some thousand miles on it (which was what my first vehicle of my own was). Because their first owners are still paying them off & driving them. The more standard loan term now is like five years, even for cars that are already used. So the pool of available used cars is older with more miles. (ETA: The cars that we've seen that are the 1-2 years old with lower miles are usually fleet cars rather than personal vehicles, those still seem to be having more turnover.)
This says that THIRTY percent of vehicle loan terms are now 6-7 years, and only 5% of car loans are paid off in 2.5-3 years. Somebody in that article is quoted as saying that only a narrower and narrower slice of the population can afford to buy new cars to begin with, which means there will be fewer used cars and they'll be older, with more miles AND more expensive.