many citizens' lives were improved. The cheap material consumption and availability is an improvement. It's just that the benefit is so widely available that people stopped thinking of it as a benefit.
It used to be that owning a TV or radio was an expense you planned for and it had to last.
Of course there are those who were hurt from the move from blue collar manufacturing, but overall, the aggregated benefit is higher than the losses from those who were laid off. And it's not as if new industries did not spring up.
> It used to be that owning a TV or radio was an expense you planned for and it had to last.
Thereby replacing one problem with another. The hope was that quality would be minimally impacted and repairs would be affordable. Instead, businesses are incentivized to quick-to -obsolesce products.
Disastrous garbage problems that impact everyone, even the wealthiest, though they are blissfully unaware.
> Of course there are those who were hurt from the move from blue collar manufacturing, but overall, the aggregated benefit is higher than the losses from those who were laid off. And it's not as if new industries did not spring up.
Trump’s rise in 2016 shows that this narrative is woefully inadequate.
It used to be that owning a TV or radio was an expense you planned for and it had to last.
Of course there are those who were hurt from the move from blue collar manufacturing, but overall, the aggregated benefit is higher than the losses from those who were laid off. And it's not as if new industries did not spring up.