"Adjusted for Inflation" Idiocy
I find that when people are trying to justify highly increased prices on goods or services, they'll often bring in inflation to prove "Oh no, it's not more expensive than it use to be, it's actually a LOT cheaper!"
They do this by "adjusting for inflation" the costs of related goods and services from decades ago. For example, when the PS3 launched at it's 800 dollar price tag, some claimed it wasn't that big of a deal since if you took the price of an Atari 2600 (about 200 dollars at launch) and "Adjusted for inflation" then it too cost about 800 dollars at launch, and it sold like hotcakes!
This brilliant editor at PC Gamer is making the same tired old mistake over here where he's asking the question of how much should we be paying for games. I think.
I say I think because I stopped reading after he made that inflated error in the first paragraph, which set off this rant.
The reason this is such a stupid thing to invoke is that the people who do so are only ever invoking one side of inflation and using that to justify their claims. They ALWAYS forget to invoke the other side, and the reason they do so is because they'd look like idiots.
What they fail to do is adjust the SALARIES of the typical person back in the day as well, to see how our own salaries hold up by comparison.
For instance, the people buying that Atari 2600 back in the day were making about 20k-30k per year. You know, probably similar to what people would be making today.
But if you adjust the salaries of those 1970's gamers for inflation, it'd be about 80k-120k.
If -I- were making 80-120k per year, I can assure you I'd probably be willing to spend more on games as well - as I'd be able to afford it. But I don't. And if you adjusted my current salary back to the 1970's equivalent, I'm sure I wouldn't have been willing to (or capable of) buy an Atari 2600 at launch either.
They do this by "adjusting for inflation" the costs of related goods and services from decades ago. For example, when the PS3 launched at it's 800 dollar price tag, some claimed it wasn't that big of a deal since if you took the price of an Atari 2600 (about 200 dollars at launch) and "Adjusted for inflation" then it too cost about 800 dollars at launch, and it sold like hotcakes!
This brilliant editor at PC Gamer is making the same tired old mistake over here where he's asking the question of how much should we be paying for games. I think.
I say I think because I stopped reading after he made that inflated error in the first paragraph, which set off this rant.
The reason this is such a stupid thing to invoke is that the people who do so are only ever invoking one side of inflation and using that to justify their claims. They ALWAYS forget to invoke the other side, and the reason they do so is because they'd look like idiots.
What they fail to do is adjust the SALARIES of the typical person back in the day as well, to see how our own salaries hold up by comparison.
For instance, the people buying that Atari 2600 back in the day were making about 20k-30k per year. You know, probably similar to what people would be making today.
But if you adjust the salaries of those 1970's gamers for inflation, it'd be about 80k-120k.
If -I- were making 80-120k per year, I can assure you I'd probably be willing to spend more on games as well - as I'd be able to afford it. But I don't. And if you adjusted my current salary back to the 1970's equivalent, I'm sure I wouldn't have been willing to (or capable of) buy an Atari 2600 at launch either.