Has the cost of HiFi gotten a bit too much?

@tsacremento : +1! We live in the new Golden Age - which means the Rich get richer (way richer) and the Middle Class and the Poor increasingly suffer and struggle to afford necessities. Nobody needs a $10K phono cartridge or a $100K speaker system!

@andy2 I think the root cause is the FED has been printing money. I mean look at their balance sheet...

I am not sure how the FED going to unwind their 8 trillion dollar balance sheet. Is it even possible? What if we going to have a crisis tomorrow, what are they going to do? Just adding more to the existing 8 trillion? This inflationary condition is not going to be "transitory". What if it’s here to stay.

Yes. Except that it is now pushing 9 trillion dollars and rising (see chart - opens a bit slowly, then use pointer) and the Fed is clueless about what to do.

The *rate* of increase may slow, eventually reach a plateau, as has been anticipated for quite some time. Just guessing.. But as to a decrease, the implications of doing so are scary. The Elites won’t let that happen in a hurry.

Mr Powell is indeed a clever man, being a lawyer by trade, and a member of the establishment Elite.

Add all this liquidity sloshing around the world, negative real interest rates but nominal rates rising, with supply chain constraints, inflation genie out of the bottle, massive budget debt and ongoing deficits, geopolitical tensions, and other structural issues, and stick on When the Levee Breaks. Like in the closing credits to the film The Big Short.

I would rather have an engineering marvel like a Ferrari than an equivalent priced high end audio system.

Say a 296 GTB  for example - $568,300  Jays Audio is often reviewing systems in his basement , for this sort of price  

Or alternatively you could  have the Ferrari - With a long legged blonde in the front seat in tiniest  of mini skirts

C'mon men what would you really want?

Around 1985, I bought a Harman Kardon integrated amp (the 645 vxi) for around $250 IIRC. It's still hooked up in a bedroom system. These days, NAD sells a similar product (the C316BEE V2) for $479 (Crutchfield price).  So the price hasn't doubled in ~37 years.  But neither product has ethernet, USB, WiFi, bass management, upsampling, or an LCD touch screen.  In many HiFi components, new technologies not only inflate the price, they often become outdated within 5 years or so.  Same with vehicles. An infotainment system adds maybe $2000+ to the price, and is outdated many years before the engine starts burning oil.  Yet it provides little capability - much less, really - than you'd get from a $500 tablet.