At the area waterpark they sell one-use waterproof cameras.

Calculators -- a scientific calculator that cost $250 when I was in college is a giveaway item now.

Long-distance telephone calls -- calls that used to cost several dollars a minute are now free and unlimited with a $25/month Vonage plan, and not just within the United States, but also to Mexico, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy.

Broadband Internet -- we're in the middle of the transition to free or nearly free universal broadband access, with the multiplication of free WiFi hotspots and citywide free WiFi networks. I stayed at a hotel last week that charged $15/day for Internet access; this week I'm in a hotel that costs less and gives highspeed access away. We know which way prices are going.

Letters: the cost of stamps and paper and envelopes and all that might have risen, but the cost of sending a letter is now exactly zero cents.

Travel: gasoline costs a lot, but how much does one have to spend to travel 100 miles? With air-conditioning?

Newspapers: how much did it cost to read The NYT, the WaPo and the WSJ every day if you lived in the country? Even if you pay for the content online, how much does it cost now?

Medicine: there's lots of stuff that used to be treated with surgery and can now be treated with pills.

Copying: how much did it cost to make five copies of your dissertation, 50 years ago?

Just another example of China exporting deflation??

But let's put these changes in a different perspective by trying to apply some weights.

Currently cell phone services have a weight in the CPI of 0.587%. In 1998 their weight was 0.059%.

This means a 10% drop in the price of cell phone service now has the same weight as a 100% drop had in 1998.

In 1946-48 when I was in the first -second grade my family did not have a phone. We got our first telephone in 1948. Now, which was the larger increase in standard of living -- my family getting a party line in 1948 or someone getting a cell phone in 1998?

I do not know, but there has always been changes in technology that was not fully reflected in the data. The real question is was there a sudden change in the inability of the data to capture these changes in the late 1970s so that the sharp slowing of real percapita income growth that emerged around this time is incorrect? In other words, has the data become more inaccurate in recent years then it use to be?

Will this comment also have lines through all the text except the first line? Will it also be posted at 2:12 PM? This seems to be a recurrent problem, or is it just me?

I too am trapped in 2:12pm, or AM I?!?!

DVD players are dirt cheap. My wife is a teacher and the one in her classroom just got stolen. She bought a new one for $40. The last VCR I bought was more than twice that much

Don't forget laptop computers. My parents paid $1500 for a mid-range laptop for me for college a little over six years ago. Now, a mid-range laptop from Dell is around $700, and it is fantastically better in every way than my original college laptop. If you want to spend $1500, you can get a truly amazing machine, and if you want to spend whatever $1500 dollars in 1999 would be in 2006, you can get virtually anything you want.

My robot (Scooba) that cleans my floors cost $350. How much is never having to buy another mop (or Swiffer) and never having to use it worth, CPI-wise?