economy......here and there
other day I was at a friend's place. I've been to his place before and this time I noticed a new TV sitting in the living room. thought he moved the old one to his bedroom, well actually he trashed it.... and it was only a yr old :) apparently something went wrong and to just examine it, the cost was about $125, while the original cost of the TV is itself $200.
not only TV, any consumer product in the US is basically use and throw. the economy here strongly encourages spending. In a way its good for the general economy of the country, as stagnation can be prevented. But looking at the middle class here, a significantly large chunk lives paycheck to paycheck, some without even medical insurance. and they are forced to spend too, on a variety of stuff.
in India, the situation is totally reverse. we still have that TV we bought more than 10 yrs back :) people can keep saving for unforseen expenses, but generally we tend to burden ourselves with minimal stuff. people don't embrace new technologies quickly.......it may hamper growth.
both have positives and negatives, but the more I think about this, the more confused I am :)
26 Comments:
Its the same here in Singapore. The cost of repairing is almost 3/4th the price of a new one. So people generally throw away things if it has even a minor defect. We live in a fully furnished rented apartment, and the things the owner asked us to throw away in the last two years were, fridge, water heater, vcr, two wooden furniture bits, washing machine and the sofa.
exactly....
ppl here in singapore are like this way too! nobody here has mobile phones more than two years old...people call discmans old fashioned, while its not half as popular as the walkman in india! well, well! people are rich here, man!
same here in UK as well.. think it wd be the same in all developed economies where the 'labour' charge is high..
on the other day, our washing machine (£250) stopped working.. i thot i wd get a new one if the repair costs more than 50 quid. the repair guy came and said that he need to fix a washer (£2), for which the labour charge was £45.
India too is slowly going towards that trend.Nonody buys second hand stuff.E.M.I is the mantra nowadays.
Its a service driven economy where parts cost more than the sum and where labor costs more than the product. Sometimes that works well since you get electronics for cheap. Sometimes it doesnt since every minor repair is more expensive than the product itself.
No wonder standard of living is higher in the US. Everyone gets more money whereas in India, where costs are kept higher but labor, since available aplenty is cheaper. Compare finding a mechanic to fix your vehicle ASAP in India and the US. That will tell you.
Confused...meto...me too.!!
My parents still have a 50 year old radio (not working) in the closet.!!
I have a camcorder here which I bought in 1993. Sony-Tr-91. Was the Top of line then. Has a problem..Sony says can't do it..since it is 10 years old. Took it to India..!...and 500 Rupees got it fixed.!!
Hi Saranyan, tell me something...don't you feel that since people don't "trash" everthing in India so easily therefore they are maintain relationships so well till now, I do not know how many Indian friends yo have, but I have seen people from both the sides. I might be sounding prejudiced but people in the west get bored very easily not only with their t.v but also with their relationships. However, the laid back attitude that Indians display definitely is not fit for a healthy market economy.
Thanks to US economy that people throw their stuff in trash instead of getting it repaired.
For students like us here in US the trash is like Vivek and Co where we get stuff like couch, tables, chairs etc etc...
Here people who are relocating also throw these stuff in trash because relocating cost is more than the stuff itself which means nalla vettai for us...:)
On the surface, what you say seems to be true; However, if you browse eBay you will realize that things are changing/ did change already. People dint know what to do with broken/used/old stuff - they dumped it or had a garage sale to make lil money out of it.. Now they have an avenue to buy/sell!
We conveniently forgot the power (and of course the worth) of dollar here. Say in US, a 27 inch tv costs $300 dollars. This equals to just 15% of a low income family ($2000) and around 6.25% of a middle income family ($4000).
In India it costs about Rs. 17000, which is twice as much (200%) for a low income family (around Rs.8500) to 70% of a middle income family (Rs.25000) .
Now tell me whether you will trash an item that costs almost 70% of your salary or try to fix it. The same applies to almost all the consumer items.
pvs, tell that to Kay, he will relocate to Singapore :)
Vani, people are forced to adopt the changes. here too discmans are becoming out of fashion. Its the age of iPods now.
chakra, thats nothing. try this, my friend had to pay $1000 on labour to change a seal in his car engine, which was $1.50. idhu eppadi irukku.
reflex, spending actually is good. but when it is forced, problem arises.
badri, latest ah ungappa um annanukkum enna selavu vecha :)
Ranga, for our country a service economy will not work. problem is population.
Narayanan, do you still have compatible TVs and media for that tr-91. I'm surprised.
Jagan, these guys make a lot of money. there are only a very few of them and they make a shit load of money.
kika, ask someone, I haven't done that either. try hello and picasa, thats what my friends told me :)
Amrita, I think you are comparing apples and oranges here. people trash products because of various reasons.....a capitalist economy being the main reason. I don't see any correlation between relationships and product trashing here.
Kay, I've done that too :) lot of stuff we picked up from trash. that actually taught me financial discipline :)
Hellboy, TV is just one example.
But generally you cannot compare simply the percentage of salary spent on consumer items and hence judge the living here. Agreed, dollar is far more powerful than the rupee. Not if you live here and spend here, maybe if you convert everything to rupees and live in India after sometime.
Here there are so many other expenses..... medical insurance, auto insurance, housing (which is unbelievable here in california).
A simple meal costs $10, whereas in India it costs Rs. 15.
Compare everything, I mean everything and then we can see why the middle class is squeezed here, more than in India.
I read this article about US economy sometime back..Dont remember exactly where.It said that in US people dont believe at all in saving money.They spend like hell and live lavishly(compared to us :) )and business does well in turn and thats what actually makes them rich..it is kinda confusing :)
nan sollavandhadha Kay sollitan.
dei kay ne poi un project pannu romba line cross panra :)
came across the same confusion
and explanation stuff at
http://jayajha.blogspot.com
made interesting reading
Saran, now I see why you are more confused the more you think of it ;-).
Jokes apart, my logic addresses only the reason why it is easier for them to trash consumer items more easily here than in India. I have mentioned the same in my comment.
Now, the issue of american middle class being forced to live from paycheck to paycheck, the insurance driven lifestyle, the exorbitant cost of living in california and so on and so forth constitute a whole different ball game and should not be linked to the reason why consumer items like TV are being readily replaced. That is fodder for a separate discussion, which we should save for some other day.
You may say that Americans are forced to replace the consumer items (encouraged by the spending economy) rather than doing it on their own will. Nope I guess, the cost of these items are significantly less that they do it on their own than being forced.
prabha, thats true. A spending economy is good. thats why US, as a country, is richer. But that said, of late there has been a lot of layoffs and the cost of living has gone up a lot.
Still businesses make a lot of money, not the salaried people.
Prabhu Karthik, thanks for dropping by. I'll read that blog.
Add to this the dynamics of people behavior. We tend to get sentimentally attached to our possessions and hence go out of the way to figure out ways to keep it working.
Plus, when comparing living standards, I don't know if its even fair to compare the prices of essential commodities like food, fuel etc. Since they are basic to the individual economies, they cannot be and should not be similarly priced across the board in different countries. If we want to compare it probably should be on non-essential consumer goods and services.
daph,
exactly, your second paragraph sums up what i felt.
Has anyone given any thought to the poor environment with all this use & throw. Guys I think we need to learn to fix things ourselves. (PS: I can't even change the light bulb, and here is me talking!)
Kay, Thank God for the students recycling initiative :)
daph, hellboy, I agree what you guys say. But generally what I feel is a lot of things is forced in this free economy. thats all.
Uma, thanks for dropping by :) and to fix these stuff, you might need some sophisticated and probably even out-dated tools. so forget it :)
USNews- How Do I Dump my PC?
Yeah although the US way seems to improve the economy, oyu end up burning your pocket's. That's what i like about India, there always seems to be an easy way out. . .
Hi Saranyan,
Hey, we Indians imagine we are immortals and save for the unknown and get unknown mental and physical problems only to die early.
But in USA, they live for the day and continue to live much longer and healthier.
Basically it is the attitudes.Do what your attitude says.
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