Original link: http://www.loyhome.com/%E4%BB%B7%E6%A0%BC%E7%9A%84%E6%84%9F%E5%8F%97/
Although seeing U.S. inflation figures in the media can make one’s heart tremble, to be honest, every time my dad gloated over the phone to make fun of U.S. inflation, I didn’t respond. On the one hand, the prices of food, clothing, housing and transportation have skyrocketed. On the other hand, I hardly care about these basic expenses, so I have no idea. How much was eggs before, and how much was milk, I’m not impressed at all. Just need to know what to do, right?
Until recently I started clearing out some of the old stuff in the house to free up a space for an activity area. As soon as I cleaned up, I found that a lot of idle items were piled up in the house, such as tools that were used once, such as coffee tables that took up too much space, such as chairs that were idle because they couldn’t get past the sweeping robot. After some renovations, I wanted to donate the old stuff. But I don’t have a car and donating things is not easy. Later, I thought it would be sold on the second-hand market. I don’t want to mark these things as free because I think people only value them if they pay for them. When setting the price, I basically searched for the prices of these new products, and then set the half price to see if anyone was interested.
To my surprise, when searching for current prices, I found that the durable goods I bought a few years ago have doubled before I knew it. For example, I spent 80 yuan to buy a coffee table, but now it has turned over to more than 200 yuan, and I can still sell it for 100 yuan. I followed this principle and sold everything in my house online, but I didn’t expect it to be sold out very quickly. I usually put the unused things in the original box, so they are well protected, and many of them look like new ones, so many buyers are very happy when they come to pick up the goods, with a look of “too much” It’s worth it” expression.
Many of them were students who had just moved to San Francisco. For example, a little girl who didn’t have a car came to my house on the light rail, pulling a shopping cart with wheels behind her (the kind that many elderly people use to buy groceries). She bought from me the sewing machine I bought to pass the time the year the pandemic started. I’ve probably used that sewing machine less than ten times, and it looks like new, with all the parts in it and some extra accessories I bought at the time. She happily paid and walked away with the sewing machine in her hand. I asked her curiously if she liked handicraft, and she said yes, she was still knitting sweaters on the way here. She used to have a sewing machine, too, but sold it when she moved, so she needed to buy a new one in San Francisco. For me, it’s also a relief to find a suitable new owner for my unused belongings.
So why talk about inflation again? The main reason is that I never imagined that these seventy-eighty-eighty-eighty idle items could still sell for a lot of money. From my point of view, they have little use value, so they just take up space. I’m not expecting how much it will sell for, I’m just hoping to find someone who really needs it. If there is no inflation, I will mark it out at half the price I bought that year, and it is estimated that the mailbox will burst immediately. Selling at half the current price, or basically selling out within a week, shows how powerful inflation is.
Although the United States has a high degree of acceptance of second-hand goods, who goes back to staring at the Internet for dozens of dollars, and then goes to the door to pick up the goods? When I buy things myself, many of them just need to be searched on the Internet at the time, and I don’t spend any effort to find second-hand products. Those who are willing to spend this effort are not economically well-off people, except for students who are partial to manual workers. For example, a Chinese immigrant came to me and spent ten yuan to buy an electric cooker, saying that it was to be used in the store. He wanted to pick it up at 10 o’clock in the evening at first. I thought it was not safe to say it was a weekend. He said that he would only rest on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I left the pot for him for a few more days. He was also very happy to see the pot, because I was more protective, and he excitedly explained how he was going to use it. I thought to myself, I bought this pot for 20 yuan from the Internet back then, but I didn’t expect it to be a hot-selling product after so many years.
I probably haven’t been in contact with “ normal people ” for a long time. Seeing them working hard and saving money also reminds me of the time when I was in school, when a meal card of 200 yuan could be eaten in the cafeteria for a month. . I was deeply impressed that at that time, the knife-cut noodles in the cafeteria were only 2 yuan per bowl (of course, the college cafeteria was subsidized), and there was no need to line up, so the sisters who were not well-off in our dormitory especially liked to eat noodles, and I was caught They ate a lot of knife-cut noodles with them. Going forward, I liked to wholesale popsicles in the summer when I was a child. I remember that the wholesale of fifty cents was only thirty cents. Recently, I swiped the video to “Ice Cream Assassin”. I was surprised to find that the ice cream bought in domestic convenience stores can be sold for 20 to 30 yuan at every turn, which is unimaginable. When I first started working, Häagen-Dazs ice cream was still a luxury item in China, and there were luxury stores in Shanghai’s business district. However, in the United States now, the first reaction to seeing Haagen-Dazs is that it is too sweet. If I hadn’t been brought by my friends all year round, I probably wouldn’t be able to buy an ice cream. There is also a free ice cream machine in the company, but I almost never touched it because I was afraid of high blood sugar. For me, price is no longer a factor, and I can no longer experience the pure joy of ice cream.
As someone who is still somewhat sensitive to numbers, thinking about these price tags seems to connect many almost forgotten fragments of life. People are sometimes not so rational. For example, a senior executive in my former company told us that he was most troubled by the fact that he was charged for the water in the restaurant, so that the company where he was there would not have dinner parties. Dare to order water, order wine directly. A bottle of water is indeed much more expensive than the supermarket, but compared to hundreds of wines, it is still insignificant, right? He doesn’t really care about the cost, he just thinks some things are not worth it. Thinking about it, I was also a person who downloaded a lot of e-books and games… Some things started to charge, which made people feel a little stunned. It turned out that it was not free.
This article is reproduced from: http://www.loyhome.com/%E4%BB%B7%E6%A0%BC%E7%9A%84%E6%84%9F%E5%8F%97/
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.