• TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1222·
    4 days ago

    If you think $700 is bad, it’s £700 in the UK… which is $913. 🤢

    Also:

    • median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)

    • median household income, USA (2022): $74,580

    A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.

    A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.

    The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely insane.

    The OLED Deck starts at £479. Still a lot but not as egregious. The LCD Deck is currently £262 ($344), which is pretty great.

      • K3CAN@lemmy.radio
        17·
        4 days ago

        The US doesn’t have a national sales tax, so it depends whether the individual state imposes a tax or not.

      • kudos@lemmy.ml
        20·
        4 days ago

        It varies state by state, some like Oregon have 0% tax, but most will be around 13% 6-8% or so iirc.

        • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
          6·
          4 days ago

          The highest state sales tax is 9.56%, most states are 6-8%. Though some major cities also have a small sales tax as well.

          • kartoffelsaft@programming.dev
            4·
            4 days ago

            I live in Washington state and I’m pretty certain the sales tax here is 10% (slightly higher than your maximum figure of 9.56%). It’s a pretty well known trick here that you can account for tax just by decimal shifting and adding (ex: 5.29$ without would be 5.29$ + 0.529$ ~= 5.81$ with tax). Is that 9.56% an “in practice” figure that accounts for rounding down? I’m curious where you read it.

              • bronzle@lemm.ee
                3·
                4 days ago

                That’s the average local + state sales tax in Washington. State sales tax is 6.5%, local varies from 1.2% - 3.85% (Seattle, for a total of 10.35%)

        • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          4 days ago

          how does this work if you live close to another state? As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?

          • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
            2·
            4 days ago

            In some cases like that, where you’re in a state that has no sales tax, but near the border of one that does, they’ll actually check ID and charge you sales tax if you’re from the sales tax state.

            • dutchkimble@lemy.lol
              3·
              4 days ago

              In most countries it’s the sale point which matters, not which state you reside in, for indirect tax. I would assume it’s the same in the US. For example if you’re on holiday in a different state or country, they wouldn’t charge what you’re charged back home.

              • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
                2·
                4 days ago

                Yep, but the states with sales tax get tired of getting cheated out of their tax revenue. The specific example where I saw this was a major hardware store chain in Oregon (no sales tax) right near the border of Washington (6.5% sales tax). They asked everyone “Washington or Oregon” at the register and checked ID for anyone who said Oregon.

                Quick search says that Washington considers it a “sales and use” tax, so anything purchased out of state, but intended for use in Washington is supposed to be taxed. Kinda messed up, really.

          • Soup@lemmy.world
            3·
            4 days ago

            To put details to other person’s point: Even if you lived pretty close, for a lot of things, the gas cost would probably offset a lot of the savings. For big things for sure it would make some sense but for other things it just wouldn’t make any sense. You’d have to live right on the border and have a town with stores that carry whatever you’re buying also be pretty close.

          • K3CAN@lemmy.radio
            18·
            4 days ago

            Convenience. Unless you live right near the border, it’s probably faster/easier to shop in your own state than drive all the way to another.

            But if you do live near the border of a state without a sales tax, then it’s pretty common to shop in the neighboring state, especially for larger purchases.

            • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml
              4·
              4 days ago

              In Washington alcohol is so expensive that any reasonably sized party of alcoholics it’s cheaper to drive across the entire state to buy in Idaho (forgive this disaster of a sentence structure I’m awake like 5hr early because of cats)

          • criticon@lemmy.ca
            2·
            4 days ago

            Texas has 8.25% but New Mexico is 5.125%

            Sunland Park, NM (which is part of El Paso, TX metro are has an additional city+county tax of 2.125% so the taxes are the same as in Texas (the numbers may be slightly off, but the final tax rate is very close to Texas)

          • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
            5·
            3 days ago

            As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?

            Mostly the states are quite big, so it’s not worth the trouble. But along various state borders, it distorts the shopping experience in odd ways.

            I’ve been to towns that are missing common retailers entirely, because everyone drives to the next town over (in another state), to avoid a tax.

            We also have a rich history of driving across state lines to purchase stuff that’s illegal in our own state. It’s also illegal to bring it back, but the borders aren’t patrolled, so the only way to get caught is to have a traffic violation while doing it.

            Or so I’ve heard. I never break any laws, myself.

      • notfromhere@lemmy.ml
        6·
        3 days ago

        Charts like that are great, I love to see them. However, they need to have a year for the inflation-adjusted dollars else it’s nearly meaningless when referred back to.

      • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
        16·
        4 days ago

        Cool chart.

        It really makes the point to me that the PS1 and PS2, when adjusted for inflation, and for relative compute power, were just such a fantastic deal.

        I was recovering from some serious console-purchase fatigue, when I bought my PS1 to replace my garage sale purchased Super NES. It was a big deal to me.

        I’ve paid PS5 prices (inflation adjusted) for a game system a few times (my first Switch and SteamDeck), but they’ve been a lot more mind blowing than what appears to be on offer today.

        Disclaimer: My favorite game is 8-bit, anyway.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        So the most comparable console there is $456, and this is $700.

        That is bad.

        The PS5 Pro barely costs more to produce.

        $700 is bad. $913 is awful.

        Just because the PS3 (a console universally panned as being way too expensive) was similar doesn’t mean PS5 Pro pricing is alright.

    • drathvedro@lemm.ee
      29·
      4 days ago

      If you think 26% is bad, in Russia it’s going to be priced at around ₽80-100k(~$883, VAT included), but the median monthly salary is ₽43.500 - $480… That’s well over 100% median household income given that over 38% families only have a single parent. And I’m pretty sure that’s not even the worst out there, think like Argentina has an extortionate import tax or something?

    • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      4 days ago

      I don’t remember exactly, but some relative poverty lines start at 60% of median household income.

      • £700 / (£32,400 * .6 / 12) ≈ .43, thus 43% of monthly income for a poor household in the UK
      • $700 / ($74,580 * .6 / 12) ≈ .19, thus 19% of monthly income for a poor household in the US

      I hope median household income is netto, otherwise this is skewed.