And in the meantime, we can communicate with anyone on the planet for $10/month in 1976 dollars. We can call anyone in the US, spending our lives on the phone 24/7 for $15/month in 1976 dollars. Gas is still cheaper in real dollars by 30% than at its peak price in 1981. We go to eat much more, go to movies and sporting events more, 90% of us have 100 frigging channels of television and can watch just about anything we want whenever.

Chomsky is a has-been, a stacist, and a perpetual whiner. Here's hoping the blogosphere tears him a new one.

-Brad

Well, Brad, anyone can cherry-pick a few tech-related small-ticket items that have become cheaper.

Why not try the same trick with, say, housing, education and health care?

Is it as easy today for a person to buy a house, get a college degree, or have an operation?

Hardly. When you look at the big-tickets, instead of focusing on trivia, Chomsky's point becomes clearer.

Stephen,

We have more obesity because food is cheaper and with more variety that tempts our taste buds. At the same time, we have medical devices like a clamp put on the entrance to the stomach laproscopically to have the same effect as stomach stapling, but is adjustable and removable as needed later. We have drugs that cure or manage a variety of diseases, especially cancers, that enable people who had death sentences a generation ago to live fairly normal lives. Home ownership is at its highest level since the census beureau began keeping stats in the mid-1960s. Home ownership is up significantly in Southern California, a very expensive housing market. Chomsky is making up his own doom and gloom despite a tidal wave of dynamism that brought our country forward by leaps and bounds in the past two decades. It's tiring.

-Brad

I think Stephen has a point Brad, yours is rather like the famous observation that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Or closer to home, like the administration spokesman I heard who answered a question about Europe's greater proportion of public political participation, by contrasting the larger number of applicances found in US kitchens.

Johne,

Stephen has a point if he pulls data out of his dairy-air. Economic data on the three issues he mentions doesn't support his point of view. Housing ownership, up, especially among minorities. College degrees, up, especially among minorities. Operations, way up. Think a moment... In 1976, what did you do if you damaged your knee skiing? Now, many knee surgeries are routine and outpatient, with people in serious "rehab" a week after the procedure.

I guess it just goes to show what Chomsky's biggest contribution is. Make up absurd assertions to support your bogus moral conclusions. Why didn't anyone think of doing that before?

-Brad