TV Abundance

Entrepreneurs transform scarcities into abundances. Get 264 TVs for the time price of one in 1997.

In 1997, Sharp and Sony introduced the first large flat screen TV. It measured 42 inches and sold for more than $15,000. At the time, unskilled workers were earning around $7.50 and hour. It would take them 2,000 hours to earn the money to buy one. Today you can pick up a new full HD TV at Best Buy, Amazon, or Walmart for around $130. Unskilled workers are now earning closer to $17.17 an hour, so it would take them around 7.57 hours to earn the money to buy one. The time price has fallen by 99.6 percent. For the time required to earn the money to buy one TV in 1997, you get 264 today. Instead of spending a whole year to earn the money to buy a TV, you now need to spend only one day.

You can now enjoy our new course on The Economics of Human Flourishing at the Peterson Academy.

We explain and empirically demonstrate why more people with freedom means much more resource abundance in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. You can read more at superabundance.com. There has never been a better time to create more life.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.