Poor shielding and misunderstood energy turned the ballasts and energy handlers into legendary sources of exotic electromagnetic pollution. In one famous Canadian experiment, blind students were shown to experience learning problems when instructed under the electronic hash coming from poorly shielded early ballasts. In thirty years of stepwise electronic refinement, these problems have faded into historical memory in all but a few ill-lit legacy fluorescent installations where original tubes still flicker valiantly. The same technology as in the four-foot tubes, but miniaturized and folded into roughly the same form factor as an incandescent bulb, these slick little devices can meet almost every lighting challenge with efficient fluorescent lighting. Incandescent lights are ridiculously simple from the electrical perspective, and simple translates into cheap, particularly when the technology has matured to the scale and universality of the light bulb.
Initial wiring is trivial, and fixture and equipment cost is very low.
For Mr. and Mrs. American Consumer, it's counter-intuitive. Of course real economics carefully considers operating cost plus equipment cost and quickly concludes that even expensive compact fluorescent bulbs are a great bargain, often saving twice their cost over their lifetime. If you are running some other browser, your results may not be predictable. As can be seen in the following graph, compact fluorescent bulbs are marginally cost-justifiable for anyone who pays less than the national average. For the rest of us, efficient CF light makes more sense the more we pay.