Are Improvements Worth Paying for
As goods and services improved, people were persuaded to spend their money in changing from old to new, and found the change worth the expense. When an airline equipped itself with jets, for example, its costs and therefore airfares would go up , but the new planes meant such an improvement that the higher cost was justified. A new car or wireless washing machine, electric kettle made life so much more comfortable than the old one that the high cost of replacement was amply (21) . Manufacturers still cry their wares as persuasively as (22) but are the improvements really worth paying for In many fields things have now reached such a high standard of performance that (23) progress is very limited and very, very expensive. Airlines, for example, go to enormous expense (24) buying the latest prestige jets, in which vast research costs have been (25) on relatively small improvements. If we scrape these vast costs we might lose the chance of paring minutes (26) flying times; but wouldn’t it be better to see air fares drop dramatically, as capital costs become relatively insignificant Again, in the context of a 70 m.p.h, limit, with platoons of cars traveling so densely (27) control each other’s speeds, improvements in performance are virtually irrelevant. Small improvements here are unlikely to be worth the thousands anybody replacing a(an) (28) family car every two years may ultimately have spent on them. Let us (29) have cars—or wirelesses, electric kettles, washing machines, light bulbs—which are made to last, and not made to be replaced. Significant progress is obviously a good thing; but the insignificant (30) from model-change to model-change is not.

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