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Originally Posted by whswhs
I had to check the math; my ability to keep track of orders of magnitude in scientific notation seems to be less reliable than I think it used to be.
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That's probably my fault; I was using engineering notation.
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Originally Posted by whswhs
Of course they probably eat much superior food!
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I eat much superior food!
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A quick online search indicates that the US spends about 6% of average household income on food. Presumably households in your future societies spend rather less.
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That's right. Food overall will not be an inferior good, but I expect that expenditure on food will rise slower than income. I expect that health care will continue to be an ultra-superior good, resulting in a standard retirement age of 110
annums. There will be others, too, but health care is probably the most significant.
The people who played
9,401 will recall that the mad scientist whose nefarious scheme the whole thing was about was 229 and had been living in conditions of extreme dependency — well beyond TL8 intensive care — for at least ten years. That sort of thing isn't cheap, and although some people will (wisely, I think) prefer a cheap overdose of soma, most won't.
Speaking of medical expenses, the people of the Huxleyesque utopia that used to be Esbouvier and will probably take the place of Seeonee in the tables above take a significant sum of their income in the form of exowomb services — offset by maternity costs avoided, but probably still a net cost.