Has the cost of HiFi gotten a bit too much?

What was the original question of this discussion? 

I do believe that high end audio equipment has escalated in price above the levels of inflation that we are seeing. A lot of the more expensive equipment is cutting edge and requires higher quality components and fabrication. Small runs cost more and the materials that are being used are more exotic than in the past. It only makes sense that these items would be escalating in price ahead of inflation. 

Off topic. I absolutely believe they will need to start mining asteroids to acquire the minerals required to green the world economy. We cannot pull out the required resources from this planet without making it an even bigger environmental disaster. 

@ghasley 

+1

I am naturally a skeptic. But was fortunate enough to go to a junior high school that also taught critical thinking. They made us find and read articles on the same subject from different papers and magazines and to evaluate the different viewpoints to assemble a “accurate” picture of reality. The differences in points of view helped ferrite the truth,

Some thing that has followed me through life. I took logic in college and became a scientist. My skepticism has remained… ferreting the truth. Living all over the world and understanding different points of view. I have to admit, I am pretty ashamed to be an American. As some as my European and Asian friends said, “Americans, some really smart people (fortunately me included in this group) and a whole lot of stupid ones.”. Unfortunately, true.

Possibly I am naive; I recall equipment that was out of my range from the time I was making minimum wage to now being a 1 percenter. In virtually every product there is segmentation. Maybe the difference is the mass marketers exited high end. But I have mass marketed receivers that are exceptional; so maybe they just decided the market for that final 2-3% wasn’t large enough to invest. Class warfare was difficult when I was poor; it’s equally disturbing now that I am not. 
 

on the subject of banks- society needs normalization and consistency- or it is a free for all. No question things can favor the elites. But even the poorest have benefitted. I am living proof 

Ghdprentice

not looking to start a war of words but I am curious if all the “smart Americans” share all your exact view on things? 

Very great observations and particularly these:

on the subject of banks- society needs normalization and consistency- or it is a free for all. No question things can favor the elites. But even the poorest have benefitted. I am living proof

But now we lived through the passage to a single power and a single monetary and financial systems to many powers geopolitically and to some UNKNOWN money and financial revolutions to come...

Incertain time indeed...

This is why it is a time where we look for a new balance between what is normal and consistent and what appears to be abnormal to some "conspirationists nuts" or to some  "enligtened thinkers " also, like a cancer, an abnormal growth which some others "sane" but sometimes superficial observers want to continue to call perfectly "normal" state ....

In a crisis there is no more fluent  consistency between states of the system  ...The crisis is the  gradual lost of the habitual equilibrium norm and consistency...

At the end of Rome, the romans lost their consistency and equilibrium of power between the senate way  and the emperor way before barbarian incursions...This apply today...In banking and finance also and geopolitically alike...

A world famine now lurk at the horizon, a famine which is an artificial creation by the  immaturity of humankind...

What is a poor? Someone who cannot eat or drink or work ...

For some years now the poors whom habit the world benefit less and less in this crisis time... An articicial inducely created crisis not by a global conspiration, but by the stupidity of a multiple numbers of egoistic conspirations like a serpent raise his head ...

Between chaos and a global totalitarian control, i wanted true democracy free from corporate lobbying of all kind... We dont have it in Canada at all, now less than ever...

And i dont see it anywhere now....Even the appearence of democracy are losing more and more ...Only subsist  some degree of totalitarian fascism around the world...Fascism being a collusion between the corporations and  state...