You’d have spent $3,054.82 in 1991 to buy all the stuff in this ad that you can now do with your phone. That amount is roughly equivalent to about $5,100 in 2012 dollars.

When economists who are of the old mode claim that there have been no productivity increases since 1980 or whenever — which seems to happen a great deal as they use very old-fashioned and incorrect definitions of productivity — I point to something like this as a glaring counterexample.

It’s not quite as applicable perhaps as other examples that could be used, but it is more obvious. It’s apparentness helps to drive the point home.