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2025-04-04-Price-perspective.md (2369B)

    

  1. ---
  2. title: A Firefox addon for putting prices into perspective
  3. date: 2025-04-04
  4. ---
  6. I had a fun idea for a small project this weekend, and so I quickly put it
  7. together over the couple of days. The result is [Price Perspective][amo].
  9. [amo]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/price-perspective/
  11. Humor me: have you ever bought something, considered the price, and wondered how
  12. that price would look to someone else? Someone in the developing world, or a
  13. billionaire, or just your friend in Australia? In other words, can we develop an
  14. intuition for [purchasing power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power)?
  16. The Price Perspective add-on answers these questions. Let's consider an example:
  17. my income is sufficient to buy myself a delivery pizza for dinner without a
  18. second thought. How much work does it take for someone in Afghanistan to buy the
  19. same pizza? I can fire up Price Perspective to check:
  21. ![](https://redacted.moe/f/7e13a09b.png)
  23. The results are pretty shocking.
  25. How about another example: say I'm looking to buy a house in the Netherlands. I
  26. fire up funda.nl and look at a few places in Amsterdam. After a few minutes
  27. wondering if I'll ever be in an economic position to actually *afford* any of
  28. these homes (and speculating on if that day will come before or after I have
  29. spent this much money on rent over my lifetime), I wonder what these prices look
  30. like from the other side. Let's see what it'd take for the Zuck to buy this
  31. apartment I fancy:
  33. ![](https://redacted.moe/f/37ddbe71.png)
  35. Well... that's depressing. Let's experiment with Price Perspective to see what
  36. it would take to make a dent in Zuck's wallet. Let's add some zeroes.
  38. <video src="https://redacted.moe/f/2752d5bc.webm" autoplay loop muted controls></video>
  40. So, Zuckerberg over-bidding this apartment to the tune of €6.5B would cost him a
  41. proportion of his annual income which is comparable to me buying it for €5,000.
  43. How about the reverse? How long would I have to work to buy, say, Jeff Bezos's
  44. new mansion?
  46. ![](https://redacted.moe/f/608ace06.png)
  48. Yep. That level of wealth inequality is a sign of a totally normal, healthy,
  49. well-functioning society.
  51. Curious to try it out for yourself? Get Price Perspective from
  52. [addons.mozilla.org][amo], tell it where you live and how much money you make in
  53. a year, and develop your own sense of perspective.