Got a Light?
As Christmas lights go up on homes around the country, you've probably noticed that the displays seem to get more elaborate every year. No longer does decorating a single evergreen in the front yard suffice. Every tree demands its own ropes of light, wrapping trunks and branches. Ubiquitous icicle lights drape even the most generic tract home in sparkling abundance. Arbiters of taste may clash over the merits of white versus colored bulbs, and energy Puritans may denounce the inessential use of electricity. But even stylistic snobs can't entirely deny the appeal of a thousand points of holiday light.</br></br>Today's displays do more than brighten the night. They tell a story of economic progress. Like the electronic gadgets aimed at gift buyers, the tiny lights outlining roof lines illustrate new sources of growth and prosperity. Aesthetic pleasure, they tell us, is an increasingly important source of economic value and hence of new jobs and business opportunities. And the same trends that boost living standards in other areas also make Christmas lights more abundant. A holiday-lighting dollar goes a lot further than it used to. Homeowners buying Christmas lights benefit from the same intense competition that has driven down prices and improved reliability in so many other industries, raising our standard of living.</br></br>When he was a teenager in the mid-'80s, David VanderMolen's job was to buy and install holiday lights for his family's Charlotte, Mich., home. Each year his parents would give him $10, enough for two 35- light strings, each 20 feet long, from Kmart. If the weather wasn't bad, a string would last three years. He eventually built up a collection of 350 light-strings, enough to make his house the most elaborately decorated in the neighborhood. Today, it would be nothing special. You can buy a 100-light string, 50 feet long, for $2.44 at Wal-Mart. Even without adjusting for inflation, that old $10 annual budget would cover more lights in a year than one could accumulate over seven years in the '80s. Today's cheaper lights, mostly made in China, also last longer.</br></br>In our advanced economy -- in which innovation and competition are pushing the prices of goods ever lower and their quality ever higher -- it's more affordable than ever to make your house into a winter wonderland.</br></br>Go ahead, light up your life.