by Crescent Pulsar R » Mon Feb 27, 2012 4:23 am
I'll just say: one, cell phones aren't created equal, and that goes for their prices; two, in this day and age cell phones are very convenient, and whether you're poor or homeless (or both) they're bound to be useful; and three, one and two can easily make cell phones a high priority, as opposed to whatever was affordable and very helpful for people back in the Great Depression.
Thus I conclude that the amount of people owning or purchasing cell phones is not indicative of how well people are doing. It makes no sense to compare how we're doing here and now to another time or place, because the living standards and conditions are different due to technology, modernization and urbanization. There's simply too much in the way of convenience for it not to mitigate the effects of a bad economy, and thus make things appear better off than any given example from the past.
I'd argue that, if inflation is an indicator for how well we're doing, then things could be worse but we're still worse off than in the past and so far there doesn't seem to be any sign of the inflation stopping or reversing.