Forty Dollar Light Bulbs

I was driving home from running half a dozen different errands today, and the radio was on. I do not know what show or what spokesperson I was listening to, but they were talking about lightbulbs.
Forty dollar lightbulbs, to be precise.
And the guy being interviewed was in favor of forty dollar lightbulbs and thought those of us who aren't are short sighted.  We plebeians are only looking at the front end cost, silly us.

 If you have a newborn baby in your arms right now, he said, and you stocked your house with the forty dollar light bulbs now, when that child goes to college the light bulbs would still be working.  I'm not sure he's right though. Since you would have spent the first dozen installments of your kid's college funds on light bulbs, he'd be going off to college at 30 instead of 18.

Then the forty dollar light bulb man blithely went on to tell us to do the math ourselves.  The average house, he said, has fifty light bulbs...

I don't know what he said after that, because his mozel Molotov cocktail of arrogant presumption exploded a hole in my brain.

Because now when you move into a new house, you will have to add in the cost of all new light bulbs into your closing costs.

Mr.Forty Dollar Light bulb Man, the reason we plebeians are thinking about the front end costs is because last year, when a light bulb burned out, we did not have to choose between a light bulb and gas in the car. Now we do.

Formerly, you could put things like 'lamps' on your gift list for a wedding registry. Now you have to put light bulbs on that list.The lamp is cheaper.

Mr.Forty Dollar Light bulb Man,another thing that we plebeians know that you apparently do not is that your claims are not accurate.  When this family built our house, we installed all the coiled, ugly, dim light bulbs that were supposed to last for a decade.  We've replaced quite a few of them in half the time we were promised the light bulbs would last.

Mr.Forty Dollar Light bulb Man, here is something else we plebeians know that you, apparently, do not.  Light bulbs are not only replaced because they burn out.  They get broken, too.  Light bulbs in lamps get knocked over, smashed, they are casualties in indoor football scrums that are strictly against the rules but happen anyway.  Light bulbs in wall fixtures sometimes break because little Johnny threw a ball in the house even though he is not supposed to.  Of course, he was only returning the through to Daddy.
Sometimes porch lights are broken by vandals or small children with rocks. But I repeat myself.

As usual, this will obviously hurt the poor far more than it hurts Mr. Forty Dollar Light bulb man. 

Has he never moved?  Light bulbs do not generally travel well, so when you move, you usually leave them behind. Sometimes your new place has light bulbs in it from the previous tenant, but sometimes not. If lightbulbs are going to cost 40 dollars, almost certainly not. When you move out of a rental you'll have to sell the lightbulbs. And you have floor lamps, table lamps, and desk lamps, all  with light bulbs that need replacing. And if you resent the fact that formerly you could do this with light bulbs that cost you .88 and now, because of government meddling, you have to spend 40 dollars a pop for a product you didn't choose and wouldn't choose, well, that's just you, stupidly looking at the front end costs when all you should consider is the savings 30 years from now.  Never mind that if you have to spend your grocery money for light bulbs now, it doesn't matter what the savings is spread out over twenty years or whatever. And money you might have been able to spend investing in a business or income earning project of some kind now has to go for lightbulbs.  You might hate this idea for all kinds of reasons- they don't always fit your lamp shades on your desk lamps; they don't give out the same kind of light and this is really hard on some of us; they produce an ugly light; you don't have forty bucks for a light shade because you thought you'd buy groceries this week.

The point is, there is no reason on earth why forty dollar light bulbs shouldn't be an option on the open market. There are many reasons why they should not be the only choice in a market narrowed down to a pinpointed selection of one by government control freaks.