Oh, weâre buying stuff. But itâs cheap-ass fall-apart crap, disposable electronics and processed food, thatâs what.
The OP-cited article is essentially correct about the broad economics, but not on the attribution of those economic forces. Itâs for different reasons than solely 1% ownership of the means. The 1% has managed a magnificent extraction of money and quality-of-life from the 99% for many decades and, more importantly, on many fronts. The pressure the article talks about was conceived by the 1% and executed by the 1%, and all of that started happening in earnest in the 1950âs, not simply after 1999 when people stopped getting meaningful raises.
In the 80âs, common furniture was solid wood, often manufactured in the USA, marketed and sold locally by small furniture sellers. Sure, it was expensive, but not more expensive than it is today, proportional to income. Now, furniture at the same retail cost is cheap veneer on fiber core, almost universally, even so-called âniceâ furniture. Or, if itâs Ikea and claimed to be solid wood, it is composite wood from many small pieces glued together. Real solid hardwood furniture from large planks is a specialty item that will set you back thousands. Even the middle-to-upper end of solid wood furniture is dowel-joined or nailed instead of mortise and tenon or dovetailed like not very long ago. And it is all almost universally produced in faraway lands from destroyed rainforests. Itâs the same price as ever, and made of cheaper and cheaper raw materials.
If Hersheyâs could produce chocolate syrup from seawater and shit, they would. The HFCS and other crap going into the product is a direct result of massive piles of nitrates leftover from the ramp-up in nitrate production for WWII. We (USA) were hedging our bets and did not fully know if the bomb would work, or if it could bring an end to the war. So we were preparing for the long haul by ramping up oil production to stockpile nitrates in order to produce bullets and shells for a long, protracted war. These materials were left over, as well as the means to produce them, and were repurposed to fertilizing corn. Production of it only increased after the war. Companies producing processed foods and soda like Coke had much cheaper ingredients and devised many new markets for their corn-syrup based fabrications. That process of cheapifying our food and drink continues like a Mooreâs law for food: cheaper and cheaper ingredients means bigger and bigger profits, and bigger and bigger marketing schemes to foist them on people, as well as bigger conspiracies to hide the dark truths about them. Thatâs another 1950âs thing that has only increased geometrically over the decades.
Cars are now cheaper than ever to produce and still cost more and more each year, and fall apart faster. What proportion of car ads is it on TV? More or fewer than drug ads? Hard to say.
Direct marketing of drugs to patients pre-prescribing to their doctors the drugs they want to take drives the many trillion dollar drug industry and health care industry. 1 trillion for drugs, 2+ trillion for health care buying that trillion of drugs.
Health care would be getting more efficient, due to advances in treatment and sensitivity of diagnostic testing, but instead has become an exercise in more of it and more expensive, due to collusion between government, hospitals, insurers and pharma.
College tuition has increased at a rate far outpacing inflation since the 1980âs. Nuff said.
As weâve discussed in other threads, interest rates for student loans have increasingly strangled newcomers to the workforce. Laws restricting bankruptcy and loan forbearance add to that burden and fatten the 1%'s pockets.
I would go on and on. But the deck has been stacked for a very long time. But itâs not a simple grab-and-run like the article implies. It is systematic, insidious, and long-standing. It will be extremely hard to stop.
Weâre buying stuff. Cheap shit that will be in the dumpster next month, because thatâs all they give us. We donât have a choice because we werenât given one.
