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Clothing has been relatively cheap for at least 30 years, as far as I know. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-

by brvsft 3y ago

Clothing has been relatively cheap for at least 30 years, as far as I know. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-... Not sure why the link doesn't show it, but this link came up on a Google Image search for clothing vs. everything else in CPI. Here's a link to the image itself: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/clothing.jpg https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/clothing.jpg And the Fed (since the image only goes out to 2013): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAPPSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAPPSL (apparel) vs. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL (all items) My only point is, clothing has been cheap for a long time, and hasn't risen with inflation. I can't tell if your comment is saying that fast fashion is responsible for clothing being cheap, or what time "now" specifically refers to, so I'm not going to assume anything about that. Maybe I'm just adding to what you're saying in pointing out that clothing has been cheap for quite a while, and fast fashion has little to do with it (if anything, fast fashion is probably just a product of how affordable clothing is). Of course, it's affordable because clothes can be manufactured cheaply in quite a few countries. Seems a lot of it is made in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, etc. I doubt the workers there are paid 'well' by our standards here in the US.

achenet 3y ago
thanks for sharing those nice links ^_^ I recently got into sewing recently, and I gained a new appreciation for my clothes (generally relatively cheap basics, made overseas). Somewhere in China/Vietname/Malaysia there's a person, probably a woman, who can sew like 1000x times better than me, churning out perfect garment after perfect garment for like 12 hours a day and getting paid pennies for her mindblowingly good work. I do like to think I have some talents, that I occasionally make good decisions. But man, 90% of my financial success is luck: right parents, right country, and it just so happens the only thing I'm not awful at (I tried working a mimimum wage retail job at H&M, and while I was barely competent, I feel like I was one of the worst performers there) just happens to be a skillset with lots of well paying employment.

by brvsft 3y ago

achenet 3y ago

thanks for sharing those nice links ^_^ I recently got into sewing recently, and I gained a new appreciation for my clothes (generally relatively cheap basics, made overseas). Somewhere in China/Vietname/Malaysia there's a person, probably a woman, who can sew like 1000x times better than me, churning out perfect garment after perfect garment for like 12 hours a day and getting paid pennies for her mindblowingly good work. I do like to think I have some talents, that I occasionally make good decisions. But man, 90% of my financial success is luck: right parents, right country, and it just so happens the only thing I'm not awful at (I tried working a mimimum wage retail job at H&M, and while I was barely competent, I feel like I was one of the worst performers there) just happens to be a skillset with lots of well paying employment.