Today, a stove that looks like one of those things in the 1991 catalog costs about $500, maybe $600. Washing machines cost about the same. That’s only a 25-50% increase, when overall prices have increased by 130% and rents have increased by 200% since 1991.
So yeah, when a stove was worth a whole month’s rent, it was comparatively a bigger deal than today, when a stove is worth less than half a month’s rent.
The same is broadly true of furniture and other home goods, too: prices have gone up slower than inflation, so in theory we could store more stuff in our cramped homes.
What do you mean back then? Appliances are expensive now.
Relatively speaking? Appliances are cheaper than they were before.
Here’s a Sears catalog from 1991. Appliances are at the end, past page 800 or so. Stoves are $400 or $500. Washer is $400, and a dryer is $300.
By official inflation numbers, things are about 2.3x as expensive now as in late 1991.
Median rent, the rent that the average person was paying, was around $450. Median rent today is about $1500, more than 3 times as much.
Today, a stove that looks like one of those things in the 1991 catalog costs about $500, maybe $600. Washing machines cost about the same. That’s only a 25-50% increase, when overall prices have increased by 130% and rents have increased by 200% since 1991.
So yeah, when a stove was worth a whole month’s rent, it was comparatively a bigger deal than today, when a stove is worth less than half a month’s rent.
The same is broadly true of furniture and other home goods, too: prices have gone up slower than inflation, so in theory we could store more stuff in our cramped homes.
And they don’t last as long anymore.
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