Rising Prices Are Bad, but Plummeting Prices Are Worse: Americans may envy China’s deflation. They shouldn’t (CW: The Atlantic) (archive.ph)

submitted 1 week ago by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Living in China is getting cheaper. Because rents in my neighborhood in central Beijing are dropping, my wife and I pressed our landlord to reduce ours by $140 a month in a new lease that we signed last month. He wasn’t too happy about it, but he’s lucky that we didn’t move out. Given the desperation of local landlords, we probably could’ve saved another $500 a month had we switched to a comparable apartment nearby.

BUT AT WHAT COST?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 28 points 1 week ago

“Why would someone buy a dishwasher now if it can be cheaper tomorrow?”

…because people still need dishwashers?

“China has too much supply and too little demand”.

Cool, well here in the US we have the opposite problem. Not too good either. Besides, employers seem to be thriving when labor is high in supply and demand for workers is borderline nonexistent. How about let’s stop with the austerity and union busting to get people employed. Why bother hiring now when it could be cheaper later, right?

[-] godlessworm@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

i don’t even buy that china “has too much supply/not enough demand” tbh. there are over a billion people there. you could find demand for anything you can supply

they’re conflating lack of overconsumption with lack of demand. they also export shit loads to the entire world so i dont see how they would possibly have that problem

just sounds like capitalist pig cope. i hate these people