Digital BW, The Print

Julian wrote:

>People don't want to pay US prices!
>We don't have the US disposable income ...

Neither do we -- even though our acting like we have more than enough is a
big part of what drives the U.S. economy, causes the huge trade deficit,
etc.  Have you ever seen a candle burning in an enclosed bottle?  What
happens in the end?   ;-)

Seriously, though, in other photo and many other product markets one does
see that there are more "high demanders" over here.  Look at the Mamiya 7
prices -- US (B&H) v. UK (Robert White).  The extent to which sellers can
take advantage of this to make more money depends, in large part, on the
level of competition within the market and the barriers to entry into that
market.

(One of my little victories in a previous life was to stop a proposal that
got up the cabinet level and would have limited the gray market in the US
even more than is now the case.)

> You guys have been living in the land of milk and honey

And those products and that lifestyle give us a very high heart attack rate
....  Seriously, although I think material wealth is relevant to happiness,
it has very significantly decreasing marginal utility after a point.

> with 50% of the world's wealth ...

No, that was before Enron.

Surveys of happiness find a larger correlation between happiness and a
person's relative standing in their culture, than between happiness and some
absolute measure of financial wealth.

I remember hearing an analysis of the old Los Angeles Watt's riots that
noted the people were happier (and thus not rioting) before they all had
color TVs.

While on an Indian reservation project, I ran into the local saying, "I
didn't know what poverty was until I left the reservation."  (This can be
taken a number of ways.)  The only problem an old Indian Medicine Man had
was that he could not find a young Indian to take over his practice, and he
wanted to retire.

I wonder what the US wealth and lifestyle will look like after the world
forces us to live within our allotment of CO2 emissions?  (I'm going to buy
stock in an SUV re-cycling company.)

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com