this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Lower prices incentivize consumption though, right? It definitely hurts profits, but people buy lots more pointless shit if they can afford it.
Static lower prices might, but deflation does not. If prices will be lower tomorrow or next week, it's wiser to hold on to your money and buy later.
Sounds good in theory, but I don’t think that holds up in practice. For example, computers getting more affordable and powerful year by year didn’t stop people from buying them.
If the price is lower than the opportunity cost of NOT having it, people will buy it now, even if the product will be priced better next year.
And a large part of the price increases people are struggling with are food and housing. It's not like you can wait till next year to eat or have a place to live.
Eat? No waiting. Live? Sure! If prices were consistently falling because of deflation, and you knew renting for a year would allow you to buy a larger house with the exact same amount of money you hand in your hand, most would do that and rent for a bit.
For buying a house, isn’t it kinda like the stock market (except way less liquid). Yeah, the prices may go down in a year but someone may swoop in and buy while you’re sitting on the sidelines trying to time the bottom.
A specific house may be bought up, but others will be available that are similar for substantially less in a deflationary market.
Which would put inflationary pressure on rental prices which in turn would put inflationary pressure on property prices, and we are back to square one.
You're absolutely right. The average Joe does not approach buying stuff with any kind of investment theory.
In practice, deflation always leads to recession.
As to computers, the price didn't go down, we just got more bang for our buck, different thing altogether.
It absolutely delay people buying. If you held out for 6 more months, you'd get a substantially faster computer. Thats the second variable you're introducing with this example. If your current computer was "fast enough" you'd wait, and people did.
This is my problem with economics. You're talking about theory and practice as if they're the same thing. All consumers do not make perfectly rational choices. Hell, most don't. This kind of theory only explains how rich people want you to think things work. It's not how things work in the real world.
Way back when, I used to sell computers and computer parts at retail. I assure you this was a regular conversation topic. "When is the Voodoo 4 graphics card coming out? 4 months? Okay I won't buy the older Voodoo 3 now because I can make do with my Nvidia TNT2 until then."
No they don't, nor or do they need to if you're taking a macro view.
Are you saying:
I disagree with the former, but I agree with you on the latter. None of that invalidates micro or macro economic theory.
Many rich people get rich because this works. They also play dirty tricks to create the situations, but then again in those situations the theory works.
I'll be the first to say economic theory is far from perfect and the deeper you go, the more complex, and potentially less reliable, it gets, but the basics are pretty sound.
An upgrade for a non-essential item you already own might prompt some of these considerations from some people. The decision to buy that item in the first place usually won't, especially when you're talking about essential items like groceries and housing, which is what the article in the OP is referring to.
That describes most of my life, under Moore's Law.
I handled it in the traditional way: I bought what I wanted, and then I immediately cussed about my shitty timing to my friends the next day.
only if you have money to hold to start with
But even if we could get relief on inflation, the prices wouldn’t keep decreasing by large amounts forever, right? It’s not like cars would eventually cost negative money and they pay you to take them. At some point the expected savings from waiting aren’t enough to justify the pain of doing without the shiny new thing.
While I accept your point, I feel conditioned to interrupt here and clarify that I absolutely would download a car. There was some unexpected confusion about this, at one point.
Okay. Carry on. Thank you.
Do people really do that? If lettuce got back in the range I was used to paying before, I feel like I'd start buying it again as soon as I noticed.