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This in spades. As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was i

This in spades. As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. And, speaking as someone who thankfully doesn't have to worry nearly as much about such things thanks to the sacrifices my parents made... The DIFFERENCE in quality of life changes too. Its not just the cost of buying the cheap stuff every time, it is also that frustration of watching it break over and over. Also, dare I say. One of the biggest silent accelerators of our class divide (financially) is this dilemma. In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. Lower income families could save and buy an expensive appliance but know it would last or at least be repairable. A fridge was a real investment. A set of silverware had the extra couple mm of thickness or even a square handle so it wouldn't bend at the first sign of trouble. Now? Its all disposable, so those who have money to keep up with planned obsolescence will pull ahead. Consumers save 5-10$ on a 100$ tool, but now it lasts 3-5 years instead of 30-50

jxramos 6y ago
This makes me think about some of the reviews I read for a book that came up in an article I read back in the end of May https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/dp/B0006CUBPG#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/... Search them for future and time and you'll hit upon the main thesis quickly, eg: Banfield carefully defined class membership, not in terms of income status, such as government statistical poverty levels, but in terms of orientation toward the future, or time preference. I can't say I ever heard such an idea so clearly stated before. I still haven't dug into the argument too much to know one way or another or be able to offer much in way of a critique, but it's caught my eye and attention enough to make it a reading TODO.
- content_sesh 6y ago
  I haven't read the book either, but from reading the reviews it seems like the thesis is that your wealth is a function of your time orientation - whether you prefer to plan short term or long term. If that's the case, I disagree strongly. It seems like a post-hoc conclusion; if you are wealthy, you can afford to plan for the long term; if you are poor, often you can only orient your behavior towards immediate needs and survival. Poor people know that its better to save for a house than pay rent to a landlord - they're not stupid. But your kid has a cavity that need filling, the rent you are paying is due, and god help you if you have an unexpected expense like your car breaks down. Does the author account for decades of wage suppression that prevents all from sharing in the nation's wealth? The systematic erosion of labor rights? The (I'm assuming the author's American) carceral state that makes people unhireable and takes away some of their most productive years for earning and saving? In the case of the Black community, does he account for the generational effects of centuries of stolen labor? The list goes on. Poverty is a cycle[1] and is worthy of serious study and consideration. Paternalistic victim blaming has no place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
  - michaelt 6y ago
    The time-orientation theory reminds me of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
    - content_sesh 6y ago
      The follow up studies on this are also quite interesting, especially the one with the "unreliable tester". There are many factors that go into individuals' decision making processes, and trust is a big one.
smileysteve 6y ago
> afford used Chrysler cars > In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. On the surface, I assign this to nostalgia and maybe survival bias; Automobiles alone provide an example where, in the the 80s, Japanese manufacturers began dumping automobiles in the the U.S. market (and making cheap quality products in the U.S. in the 90s) where the base model could last 2-3x as many miles as the prior domestics (GM, Chryslers). I also make this statement with a 25 year old refrigerator, washer, and dryer) and a 16 year old luxury import automobile with 180k miles on the original clutch (that I bought used) and have spent very little on preventative maintenance on. *Side anecdote on cars and unwise subscription to brand loyalty. A 1989 Mazda (made in Japan) that I bought used in 2005, had more security (key encoding, immobilizer) features than two friend's 10+ year newer Chryslers that were stolen in ~2010
- yardie 6y ago
  Survivorship bias and security through obscurity. A 1989 Mazda is old enough to not have anything worth stealing (ie. airbags) and with few cars still running no one has bothered to even try and crack the immobilizer. Your friends' late model Chryslers probably have $3000-$6000 worth of airbags alone.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  I do wonder how this all shakes out now that many brands are selling out as glorified drop-shippers of increasingly poor quality products. When brand is meaningless what other signals will consumers use to filter? Will we all need test machinery to vet every purchase?
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    Brands have been meaningless for a long time. Open an applicance made by Whirlpool, Amana, Kitchen-Aid, Jenn-Air or Maytag and you'll find nearly identical internal components. They are all owned by Whirlpool. Yet this has no effect on people swearing by or swearing at any one brand. Buying a car, you can try to shop by brand but surveys by Edmunds and Consumer Reports have the car companies trading places frequently year over year. Even perennial favorites Lexus and Toyota have model/year combinations that perform worse than other brands. I'm not even sure that drop-shippers are hocking lower quality items. The items are so similar to name brand kit that I'm pretty sure they're using the same supply chains to source a lot of that stuff.
smileysteve 6y ago
> Now? Its all disposable Part of me also thinks that this Nostalgia is related to maintenance ideology. Ie, it's not that Washers, Dryers, TVs, Cars never went bad, but they had repairable parts and were worth the money to have repaired. This is not unrelated to ongoing maintenance at a house; Derelict houses (and popular poverty highlight - hookworm related Septic maintenance) are maintenance items that still need to be done; having these maintained creates jobs; but are derelict.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Modern appliances and cars are highly repairable. I've repaired many of my own appliances and vehicles to significant savings. The difference is that labor is expensive. Fixing things takes problem solving skills that are generally highly valuable on the market. Especially when you couple those skills with a little bit of specialized knowledge.
unishark 6y ago
My dad always bought used cars. He avoided chrysler. It's not like their used cars are somehow the only cheap ones. These days I'd say the highest quality cars are definitely not the most expensive. At least in the US where it seems like the biggest luxury brands require the most maintenance and depreciate the fastest. If you want to lose the least money by depreciation, buy an unimpressive used toyota. For that matter I can't really think of anywhere significant that the little parable applies. The way to get rich is to spend like you're poor, and save your income.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Meh... Products today have shorter life spans because we figured out how to build them that way, while being far cheaper and no less (often more) reliable for the intended lifetime. It’s just basic mathematics: when reliability depends on hundreds of parts, their individual failure rates are amplified. You need either extremely tight tolerances (today), or design with so much excess that it raises mean time to failure far beyond your intended minimum.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. As someone who used to flip $200-$2k cars and still drives those kind of cars I feel very, very comfortable saying that the difference between a Carvan and a Sienna is more or less "pay as you go" vs "lump sum up front". The difference is that the guy with the Sienna never says anything bad about it because they have all this up front money tied up in it and would feel stupid bad mouthing it.

jxramos 6y ago

This makes me think about some of the reviews I read for a book that came up in an article I read back in the end of May https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/dp/B0006CUBPG#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/... Search them for future and time and you'll hit upon the main thesis quickly, eg: Banfield carefully defined class membership, not in terms of income status, such as government statistical poverty levels, but in terms of orientation toward the future, or time preference. I can't say I ever heard such an idea so clearly stated before. I still haven't dug into the argument too much to know one way or another or be able to offer much in way of a critique, but it's caught my eye and attention enough to make it a reading TODO.

content_sesh 6y ago
I haven't read the book either, but from reading the reviews it seems like the thesis is that your wealth is a function of your time orientation - whether you prefer to plan short term or long term. If that's the case, I disagree strongly. It seems like a post-hoc conclusion; if you are wealthy, you can afford to plan for the long term; if you are poor, often you can only orient your behavior towards immediate needs and survival. Poor people know that its better to save for a house than pay rent to a landlord - they're not stupid. But your kid has a cavity that need filling, the rent you are paying is due, and god help you if you have an unexpected expense like your car breaks down. Does the author account for decades of wage suppression that prevents all from sharing in the nation's wealth? The systematic erosion of labor rights? The (I'm assuming the author's American) carceral state that makes people unhireable and takes away some of their most productive years for earning and saving? In the case of the Black community, does he account for the generational effects of centuries of stolen labor? The list goes on. Poverty is a cycle[1] and is worthy of serious study and consideration. Paternalistic victim blaming has no place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
- michaelt 6y ago
  The time-orientation theory reminds me of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
  - content_sesh 6y ago
    The follow up studies on this are also quite interesting, especially the one with the "unreliable tester". There are many factors that go into individuals' decision making processes, and trust is a big one.

smileysteve 6y ago

> afford used Chrysler cars > In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. On the surface, I assign this to nostalgia and maybe survival bias; Automobiles alone provide an example where, in the the 80s, Japanese manufacturers began dumping automobiles in the the U.S. market (and making cheap quality products in the U.S. in the 90s) where the base model could last 2-3x as many miles as the prior domestics (GM, Chryslers). I also make this statement with a 25 year old refrigerator, washer, and dryer) and a 16 year old luxury import automobile with 180k miles on the original clutch (that I bought used) and have spent very little on preventative maintenance on. *Side anecdote on cars and unwise subscription to brand loyalty. A 1989 Mazda (made in Japan) that I bought used in 2005, had more security (key encoding, immobilizer) features than two friend's 10+ year newer Chryslers that were stolen in ~2010

yardie 6y ago
Survivorship bias and security through obscurity. A 1989 Mazda is old enough to not have anything worth stealing (ie. airbags) and with few cars still running no one has bothered to even try and crack the immobilizer. Your friends' late model Chryslers probably have $3000-$6000 worth of airbags alone.
paulryanrogers 6y ago
I do wonder how this all shakes out now that many brands are selling out as glorified drop-shippers of increasingly poor quality products. When brand is meaningless what other signals will consumers use to filter? Will we all need test machinery to vet every purchase?
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Brands have been meaningless for a long time. Open an applicance made by Whirlpool, Amana, Kitchen-Aid, Jenn-Air or Maytag and you'll find nearly identical internal components. They are all owned by Whirlpool. Yet this has no effect on people swearing by or swearing at any one brand. Buying a car, you can try to shop by brand but surveys by Edmunds and Consumer Reports have the car companies trading places frequently year over year. Even perennial favorites Lexus and Toyota have model/year combinations that perform worse than other brands. I'm not even sure that drop-shippers are hocking lower quality items. The items are so similar to name brand kit that I'm pretty sure they're using the same supply chains to source a lot of that stuff.

smileysteve 6y ago

> Now? Its all disposable Part of me also thinks that this Nostalgia is related to maintenance ideology. Ie, it's not that Washers, Dryers, TVs, Cars never went bad, but they had repairable parts and were worth the money to have repaired. This is not unrelated to ongoing maintenance at a house; Derelict houses (and popular poverty highlight - hookworm related Septic maintenance) are maintenance items that still need to be done; having these maintained creates jobs; but are derelict.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
Modern appliances and cars are highly repairable. I've repaired many of my own appliances and vehicles to significant savings. The difference is that labor is expensive. Fixing things takes problem solving skills that are generally highly valuable on the market. Especially when you couple those skills with a little bit of specialized knowledge.

unishark 6y ago

My dad always bought used cars. He avoided chrysler. It's not like their used cars are somehow the only cheap ones. These days I'd say the highest quality cars are definitely not the most expensive. At least in the US where it seems like the biggest luxury brands require the most maintenance and depreciate the fastest. If you want to lose the least money by depreciation, buy an unimpressive used toyota. For that matter I can't really think of anywhere significant that the little parable applies. The way to get rich is to spend like you're poor, and save your income.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

Meh... Products today have shorter life spans because we figured out how to build them that way, while being far cheaper and no less (often more) reliable for the intended lifetime. It’s just basic mathematics: when reliability depends on hundreds of parts, their individual failure rates are amplified. You need either extremely tight tolerances (today), or design with so much excess that it raises mean time to failure far beyond your intended minimum.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. As someone who used to flip $200-$2k cars and still drives those kind of cars I feel very, very comfortable saying that the difference between a Carvan and a Sienna is more or less "pay as you go" vs "lump sum up front". The difference is that the guy with the Sienna never says anything bad about it because they have all this up front money tied up in it and would feel stupid bad mouthing it.