People Explain Which Formerly Cheap Items Are Ridiculously Expensive Today

Genetic Meats

"Lab grown meat will eventually be a thing. As soon as it becomes even remotely on par with ranching and farming raising, meat companies will drop the infrastructure and overhead of running those facilities and focus on meat printing factories."

"They will eventually be MUCH MUCH cheaper to run. Plus they'll be able to put smaller facilities everywhere dramatically reducing the size of the supply chain and saving even more money."-forfunstuffwinkwink

The Bubble

"Houses. It's actually pretty evil what is happening. They're being bought by secret corporations with deep pockets who don't care how much over asking they need to pay."

"Partly greed and partly trying to destabilize foreign economies and partly investment strategies... it's modern warfare."

"If you made a rule that only citizens can buy property and there is a 2 property limit per person... housing prices wouldn't be in the millions for sub-standard homes."-visionsofcry

Hope You're Rich If You Like Gaming

"GPUs--graphics processing units. Part of it is because of the micro-chip shortage, but I agree, there are GPUs with MSRP about 2x to 3X that price."

"I think the GTX Titan started this trend for high price GPUs, and people were willing to buy them, so prices kept going up."

"Smartphones too. Remember how a flagship phone would cost $550-$650? They have been increasing over the years, and then Apple released the iPhone X which went for $1000 starting price for the smallest storage configuration."

"People kept buying them, so other smartphone makers followed the trend."-MrFunnyMoustache

These were things nobody blinked twice at even twenty or thirty years ago.

Life In General

"Everything. The cost of living has went up 1,544% since 1940. And that was from an article written in 2012"-dixie5oh

"My mom paid for her college education working at a supermarket. When I applied to that same college about a decade ago the tuition was $35,000/year and I'm sure it's even more expensive now."-edubwub

And Public Transit Was Probably Better Then

"Bus fare, I had to get a bus from the city centre to the train centre less than five minutes up a big hill and it cost me £2.60. Nearly fifteen years ago when I first started secondary school it cost 95p for the half an hour trip to school."-ValenciaHadley

Blame Silicon Valley

"Computer parts. Around 10 years ago custom purpose built computers were exploding in popularity. The technology was advancing fast and it was getting cheaper."

"It made a lot of sense that if you didn't need a portable computer and you needed a specialised machine for work or entertainment it was actually better to build one yourself and upgrade it every few years, it would still come out cheaper than getting a laptop or a tablet which were only getting more expensive and upgrading meant total replacement."

"But we all know how that's been going the past few years. I myself have not upgraded my computer in 6 years despite wanting to."

"The costs are ridiculous across the board for computer parts, laptops, cellphones etc which doesn't make sense but it doesn't have to because it's being done on purpose. Also all this expensive tech is less and less reliable."-PckMan

A Little Fluffy Treat

"Bread. It went up by at least 2zł. It might not seem like a lot but a small bread that costed for an example 2zł now costs 4zł."

"Add that every time you now buy bread and after some time you probably would save up ~92zł a year just from the 2zł that was added to the price."

"Once again, I know that may sound like it isn't a lot, but chances are (and imo big ones) the price will be only higher so lets say during the year, around the middle of it, they add another 2zł to the price."

"If you buy bread once a week, every month, that's ~144zł. And that's not even the full price of bread. The full price would be ~236zł a year just for bread. If the infation didn't happen it would only be ~92zł a year. That's a big difference imo."-Ihavewindowsforamind

But nowadays, our anxiety is through the roof when we think about buying any of these things and how much it's going to run us.

The Doge

"Cryptocurrency. Funny thing is, more and more is coming in to circulation therefore directly defying the supply and demand pricing."

"It's literally being used to make the rich richer. Just another way of avoiding tax and screwing over the little guy."-Robofish13

"Every asset class is used to make the rich richer, crypto is by far the most openly accessible and fair of all of them, which means relative to other investments it actually makes far fewer rich people richer."

"And it's a poor way to avoid taxes, as with most cryptocurrencies, all transactions are saved forever to a transparent public ledger."-jawni

Ole Video Games

"When something is considered 'old' it's worthless. When it's considered 'retro' it becomes collectible."

"Nostalgia always wins. When people reach a certain age they pine for the things they had or wanted when they were younger."

"In their late 20s and 30s they have the disposable income to buy it. Thats why every console follows a similar 'U' shaped pattern."-upvotealready

Not The Coffee!

"Long time ago there was a coffee shortage. Prices went through the roof. A cup of coffee at a diner went from 10 cents to a dollar and ground coffee tripled or more in price."

"Everyone suspected it was not real, just the coffee industry trying to jack up the price. People stopped buying ground coffee and the price quickly went back to normal, but diner coffee stayed at a dollar and never went back down."-JackNuner

"I assume this is pre-made coffee at a Starbucks or something. A $5 bag of whole beans lasts me two weeks or so, and tastes wayyyy better freshly ground and brewed in a French press."-Raze321

There you have it--it is actually a fact that, as we have gotten older, the costs of living have absolutely skyrocketed across the board.

And they will continue to do so unless society makes a major change in who handles and controls resources--until then, better hope your wallet is nice and full.