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Created
Wed, 01/12/2021 - 17:01

How much cash would you need to be paid to agree to live without a smartphone for a year?

If you are like the typical American, the answer is US$10,000 – which is far, far more than what we are actually charged for having and using smartphones.

How much would you need to be paid to live without a computer?

According to the same research, just published by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a typical American would want US$25,000 to live computer-free for a year.

For the GPS system that lets us map where we are on all our devices, the answer is US$3,000; for streaming services such as Netflix the answer is another US$3,000.

For refrigeration the answer is US$10,000; for air conditioning, another US$10,000; and for running water US$50,000.

Created
Wed, 01/12/2021 - 17:03

The most revealing graph presented in Wednesday’s September quarter national accounts is one showing what has happened just beyond the end of the September quarter, in the one we are in now.

Melbourne’s lockdown ended on October 27.

The graph uses anonymised bank account data to show what happened to spending in Victoria as soon as the lockdown was lifted.


Selected Victorian spending data