Part of it I think is people end up in lines of work where they have a lot of excess cash. They think, "why not trick out the kitchen I use every day now that I

Part of it I think is people end up in lines of work where they have a lot of excess cash. They think, "why not trick out the kitchen I use every day now that I can afford it," and end up with these fridges that can post on instagram with a compressor that breaks in three years. Of course this class of buyer also doesn't care about durability since they can trivially afford maintenance and replacement. The thinking infests the real estate space that targets this class of buyers (increasingly these are all home sales in some markets) that attempts to "keep up with the joneses" gutting walls of dwellings and swapping out the old top of the line stove with the new top of the line stove every time the title changes hands. Who wins? The appliance companies surely. The owners who appreciate the convenience of a sink built into a stove that allows them to fill a pot for pasta water with one less trip to the sink (next decades model will include a drain I am sure but we aren't there yet). And the rest of us bear the costs of real estate priced to get a profit margin on the expenses of these "upgrades" the previous owner's real estate agent prescribed for you, in addition to a diminished supply chain of regular old appliances that work fine for 40 years.