Why is everything so expensive now?

I was shopping and just started to realize that prices have gone way up. I mean, a few years ago, paying $40 for something was a big investment. And if you bought a kitchen appliance for $100, it BETTER be good. And it was. It was high quality and worked great.

But I was at the mall and saw some stuffed animals toys, about the size of a golf ball, for $10. Wow! Beats headphones are $200 for plastic. And iPhone cases are usally in the $40s for a thin piece of plastic. What happened?

Why is everything a rip off now? Things are getting worse in quality but going UP in price! They make cars with plastic bumpers now! What's that gonna do in a crash?

It's called inflation. The government (in most cases) raises the minimum income every once in a while. If that doesn't affect you, you just have to ask for a raise, or try to earn more money with whatever job you have. Plus, malls usually have high prices because a lot of people go there, and the demand is high. I most of the times go shopping online like ebay or amazon. You literally save thousands a year from that website. And about the plastic bumper, the plastic is pretty durable, and they're better than nothing in a crash. Metal bumpers are pretty common, too.

What the plastic will do in a crash is to save your life. Cars made almost completely of steel did great at surviving crashes, but it didn't matter, because the humans in the car died. Increased use of aluminum and plastic made it possible for the humans to survive, which was much more important, even though it also means that the car gets more damage.

Many things have gone down in price. Today, there are cell phones that cost only $10. The cheapest cell phones used to cost hundreds. The iPhone isn't really something you can compare to those phones; it has more computing power than early computers that thousands of dollars.

Televisions used to be a major investment, and even very rich families would have only one. The cheapest computers cost more than a car.

Radios were so expensive that a family would have only one. And they weren't reliable at all. The vacuum tubes would blow frequently, so you had to keep replacing the vacuum tubes.

Welcome to inflation. Of course our government will tell you everything is great and that there's no inflation, and the worst part is some are dumb to sit there and believe the speeches.

Actually the bumper systems on new cars are much safer than they were 10 -15 years ago. The plastic cover you see is not the bumper system it is just a cover. Prices are inflating and the dollar is depreciating but most goods are better than they used to be.