Huh?

Had the TV on most of yesterday, but with the sound down
Fed Chair Bernanke was giving his Humphry Hawkins talk.
I did catch the following:

Representative Maxine Waters asking questions:

Transcript: Ben Bernanke (washingtonpost.com):

"I was talking with my colleagues here a little bit earlier about the ways in which the income of the average person is just going out the window. We have all this new technology and new kind of products in our lives that -- and all kind of fees, you know. What an average family is paying for telephone service now probably has been quadrupled, based on the home that we used to know that had one, maybe, telephone with an extension.

Now everybody's got a cell phone. And you've got to pay Internet charges. And you've got late fees. And you've got to pay all these extraordinary banking fees if you don't use a teller. On and on and on. But I hear no discussion of that.

And someone brought up, even, the amount of money that we're paying for health care, et cetera."

You kind of talk about it in the traditional way. And you talk about the increased costs of energy and food. But what about all of the new expenditures that the average family is confronted with?"

Huh?
Consumers now have more services, but have to pay for them.

Hey ... I use to have a canned tuna salad sandwich, and now you are serving me seared Ahi... but I have to PAY MORE!
That's not fair, it's still tuna.

I use to have analog dial up phone over twisted pair, and before that, folks had to crank the phone, go through an operator.
Now I have digital cellphone ... but I have to pay more.
Not Fair!

I use to have 300 baud acoustic modem, now I've got "always-on-line" high speed internet at thousands of times the speed and capacity... but I have to pay more.
Not Fair!

Note that I have not taken the time to check on phone charges, but I know that mine have headed down.