Funny, I thought that health and auto insurance was a lot more expensive now than in 1973
That's because we can do so much more. Used to be that in a 55mph collision you pretty much went off to the morgue. Cheap.
Today between advances in vehicle safety and medical care, both of which are expensive, you actually have a pretty good chance of not just surviving the accident, but returning to 'full' functionality. But that's expensive. Still, increase vehicle safety even more, and you turn what used to be crippling accidents even at relatively low speeds into non-injury events, or at least non-long term injury events, and you 'save' oodles of money.
As for robots and automation - never said it wasn't. Production is more efficient today, so you can get more truck for your money. A lot of the features like increased safety are design issues to boot, more than construction - so making a safer vehicle isn't actually that much more expensive than an unsafe, except for a few high dollar items like the airbags. And even those are cheaper than they used to be.
So then ... billions for an unnecessary device forced down everyone's throat?
Ask my coworker how 'unnecessary' the device is. Still, quick check: ~15.6M vehicles sold a year, $500 each for the backing camera, $8B/year. Of course, actual cost for factory standard install is more like $50, so $800M would be a better cost estimate.
That's assuming, of course, that 'nobody' would want one otherwise, but going by
several sources, they're a popular enough
option that people trade up trim levels to get them, at a cost of several thousand now.
There is an entire segment of "poor" in the US that would find themselves living paycheck to paycheck whether they were making $20K/yr or $200K/yr.
No arguments here about this. Mom's a public accountant. Ask her about the heart surgeon with the expensive wife... She said it was amazing how much a family earning less than $100k could save, while the family earning $500k/year was broke every year with nothing to show for it - not even vacation photos.
"Income inequality" is not defined by not being able to afford a Mercedes, cable TV, or a smart phone.
I'd take the smart phone out. It's often cheaper than a home phone today, and is used for all sorts of things, including job searching.