I recently asked this very question on our Instagram page and received over 70 replies. As the range of responses show, the answer is a highly personal matter.
My favorite response, although I could not be happier with all of the responses as they were respectful and thoughtful—Thank You!—, this one from t.hutchh hit the nail on the head and tickled my funny bone to boot:
Nice, right? James answers the question with a pertinent question of his own that points out there is no one right response for everyone, only right responses for each of us. A highly personal matter.
This fact is born out when we look at the entirety of responses where some people picked an exact dollar limit, mostly C-F, as a personal limit or for others as well, some going off script with written responses, and J. None of the Above getting the most votes from the available choices. But this all seems rather obvious, no?
I was inspired to broach this subject after reading, for the millionth time, some comments about hifi prices online, this time under a show report on Stereophile of a system with a $550,000 pair of speakers and $162,000 speaker cables.
“…I find it almost criminal to charge this amount, face it, they are ripping customers of [sic]”
And
“I found criminal too that you continue to present product of this prices to the general attendance of this site.
Redirect your pieces only to oil tycoons !”
And
“Does this money relate to sonic satisfaction? If so, they should stop kidding themselves, I truly hope nobody is falling for this emperor new clothes- pathetic.”
The higher the price, the greater the outrage. To the point where some commenters feel we shouldn’t even cover hifi gear costing more than $X in a show report. As if it didn’t exist, as if its mere existence is a personal affront.
Clearly the people who buy this gear think otherwise and it’s worth noting that according to Kiplinger.com, there were more than 8 million people in the US alone in 2019 with over $1 million in liquid assets, i.e. cash money to spend (and not all of them were oil tycoons, which may have been the case a few centuries ago).
As our mini survey has shown, price sensitivity is subjective and typically bears some relation to our own finances. Again, this isn’t news and you can spend serious time reading about this topic and the economics and psychology behind it. If you do go down this road, you’ll see that there’s no general consensus explaining why people buy what they buy even among those who specialize in studying such things. My hunch is one reason people buy what they buy is because they can.
In 2021, state and local lottery revenue in the United States was $32 billion. (statista.com)
To my mind, it’s a waste of time, energy, and outrage to shake our fists at the price of things, especially things we don’t have to buy. Anyone who’s ever gotten a raise, come into extra money, or imagined they might has more than likely at least thought about the things additional spending power can buy (see National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation). Hell, it’s part of the fabric that makes up the American Dream.
Epilogue
When I was a kid, we sometimes vacationed in Florida. One game we all enjoyed was a drive along the coast road in Palm Beach to look at the houses. Big fancy houses and the game was we’d each pick our favorite and explain why it was our favorite. Details about its design, architecture, and so on. Fun!
One year a friend came along for the Palm Beach coast road drive but he refused to play the game. He didn’t see the point in playing since we couldn’t afford any of these houses, his reasoning, and the whole idea of the game just made him angry. He wouldn’t even look out the car window for the entire drive. Turns out, he couldn’t appreciate anything about anything beyond his own nose as something other than things he could or couldn’t have.
