How Much Will the iPhone 15 Cost?

[vargavision]

Why bother buying a laptop at this price? Get a Bluetooth keyboard and a monitor and you're ready to go.

 

[UrbanJoe1]

Companies often try to keep margins around the same if they can which therefore can result in higher dollar profits when costs/inflation goes up.

For example, if a product costs $600 and sells for $1,000 the margin would be 40% which is a per unit profit of $400. If a company's costs increased 10% to $660 and they kept margins at 40%, the new selling price would have to be $1,100 which therefore results in a higher per unit profit of $440. In order to keep per unit dollar profits the same at the higher cost, margins would have to be reduced to around 37.7% in this case.

Right. That’s a great breakdown of how it works. Company profit margins are top priority. It’s just unfortunate that the wages & salaries of most actual workers don’t also reflect the increases… don’t quote me but I’m sure I’ve read that average people actually earned more 50+ years ago. This isn’t progress it’s re-gress imo.

 

[webkit]

Right. That’s a great breakdown of how it works. Company profit margins are top priority. It’s just unfortunate that the wages & salaries of most actual workers don’t also reflect the increases… don’t quote me but I’m sure I’ve read that average people actually earned more 50+ years ago. This isn’t progress it’s re-gress imo.

Like many things, there are a few ways to analyze incomes.

People on average, however, have continued to increase their standard of living e.g., larger houses, more or nicer cars, having more things/gadgets, etc. This is at least partially due changes in the credit/financing markets, especially longer available terms. 20 year mortgages used to be the norm, now it’s 30 years. 35 month financing on new cars used to be the norm, now it's about double that.

Unfortunately, instead of people taking advantage of longer term financing to bring down their monthly expenses, they use it to buy more, bigger or nicer stuff. If lifestyles today were as "modest" as they were 50 years ago, there would be much fewer personal money issues.

 

[UrbanJoe1]

Like many things, there are a few ways to analyze incomes.

People on average, however, have continued to increase their standard of living e.g., larger houses, more or nicer cars, having more things/gadgets, etc. This is at least partially due changes in the credit/financing markets, especially longer available terms. 20 year mortgages used to be the norm, now it’s 30 years. 35 month financing on new cars used to be the norm, now it's about double that.

Unfortunately, instead of people taking advantage of longer term financing to bring down their monthly expenses, they use it to buy more, bigger or nicer stuff. If lifestyles today were as "modest" as they were 50 years ago, there would be much fewer personal money issues.

I can easily see how debt effect’s expendable income. So how does personal debt affect net income/wages/salary? I can see how corporate debts (including governmental debt) effects wages but inflation (monetary devaluation through governmental over spending/debt/ie. money printing) has not only increased prices but gutted the buying power of the dollar. Wages are always last to increase and certainly far behind corporate profits and executive bonuses. I just feel if it was more fair both prices and wages should move in tandem.

 

[webkit]

I can easily see how debt effect’s expendable income. So how does personal debt affect net income/wages/salary? I can see how corporate debts (including governmental debt) effects wages but inflation (monetary devaluation through governmental over spending/debt/ie. money printing) has not only increased prices but gutted the buying power of the dollar. Wages are always last to increase and certainly far behind corporate profits and executive bonuses. I just feel if it was more fair both prices and wages should move in tandem.

Yes, wages can increase (and create higher costs for the company) while not increasing buying power due to high(er) inflation. However, sometimes wages/incomes do increase at a pace as high or higher than overall inflation. For example, inflation for August was 3.7% (and was as little as 3.0% in June) while wages were up on average 4.7% for the 12 month period ending in June.

Additionally, there can be other sources of income for people including savings (e.g., CDs) which are seeing higher returns than they had been.