Originally posted by Mister Guy Actually, not really. You're getting a significantly better value for your money now with cell phones. Cell phones are a somewhat odd commodity in that, like prescription drugs, the entire world's market is subsidized indirectly by the American consumer getting shafted. Cell phones were extremely expensive for very limited functionality until someone came up with the idea of bundling phone discounts to contracts. My first cell phone was several hundred dollars retail, had to be screwed into an external antenna (optional external car antenna!), and was attached to a bag that contained the battery. It was a BIG DEAL (tm) because the bag could function outside of the car, unlike other car phones which had to be wired directly into the car's electrical systems.
Once someone came up with the idea of bundling the phone right to the contract, the cost of ownership was just relocated, hidden along the length of the contract rather than paid up front. You never directly saw it unless you tried to cancel and were hit with the cost of the phone in addition to cancellation fees.
Now, mostly due to European influence and prepaid temporary phones, the American consumer is getting wise to the idea that contracts are almost never in your best interest, and the provider with a long locked in contract is not a provider that cares deeply about your happiness with them. So now the costs are swinging back the other way, and more people pay the actual retail cost for their phone. It'd be hard to say phones are more expensive though, since now you can get a Droid with unlimited talk and minutes for much less upfront AND much less per month than you used to get with the crappy analog bag phones.
My point was that people pay a higher price for more utility, but this does nothing to justify paying a higher price because it leads to more consumption, not productivity. Utility does not = productivity (how you pay for increased costs), nor does price = value (it does more, it costs more, it's really cool to surf the web on the bus, but can you afford it, is it making you more productive?)
The pharmacological issue is tied to patents in the US. It's primarily political and the economics are that of subsidy to the shareholders and management teams of key drug companies at the expense of a more diverse, worldwide lab system. Lots of literature on that. American consumers are not being jilted by foreign markets, but by their own socio-political economy.
Cellphones and other data services have become near-commodity ubiquitous, but as consumptive items. Their value in economic terms is pure churn, not productivity, so, given static household incomes, the money is coming from other sources as opportunity cost. This is not good as services are a core part of super-high household indebtedness. People become "addicted" to their cellphones at the expense of affordable housing, proper nutrition, ability to afford healthcare, and personal savings. This is a case where the "price" appears to be decreasing, but is being relocated on the balance sheet somewhere else in a non-productive capacity. The US and Canadian system of "tied-selling" of the hardware to the service has outlived its affordability. The basic cost of transmission cellphone service has not changed much for urban zones in a decade save for routine capital reinvestment budgeted on 20-year cycles; the real costs keeping per minute rates higher is the extension to rural areas, a subsidy. I would argue the current move disassociating the hardware from the service has less to do with European influence than crimped household budgets in NA. I track this stuff. It's my job.