Arnold Kling links to Mark Perry showing off some real term growth figures:

In 1950, it would have taken almost 8 months of full-time work at the average manufacturing wage to earn the $1,650 needed to purchase the 16 items above at the retail prices in 1950 (or 31.7 weeks, 158.4 days, or 1,267 hours). Today, it would take only 1.6 months of work at the average hourly wage today of $18.01 to earn the $4,580 necessary to purchase those same items at today’s retail prices (or 6.4 weeks, 31.8 days or 254.5 hours).

Kling summarizes:

One reason that the new commanding heights are education, health care, and leisure is that durable goods have become so inexpensive to obtain.

I only have one concern. Notice the unequal distribution of value surplus. Consumers are paying approximately 5 times less in real terms and producers are getting back 3 times more in nominal terms. This is great, (for consumers)! We have to notice that the increases in quality for durable goods was instigated by a relatively small profit motive. While real and long term growth figures like these are frequently presented by economists to demonstrate – 1) things are getting better all the time, 2) the unrelenting momentum and robustness of free markets to promote growth, and 3) the consumer is the real winner – we should also recognize that these rewards stem from apparently small incentives. It is a small percentage of profit motive which instigated this technological progress. If we recognize that consumer spending has been fluffed up by easy credit and other bubble policies than how much of these gains are actually mal-investments?