this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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I'll add to this: it was also from an age where necessities were fairly readily available at basic income levels (in most cities) and through a lifetime you could get ahead and upgrade your house along the way while supporting a family on a single person's income.
Now you can have two people making a decent income and still have issues affording rent/mortgage. Necessities have gone up significantly while stuff like TVs have become cheaper but also shorter-lived.
It comes from a very particular age.
It was after WWII when the US was one of the few countries that hadn't had its infrastructure destroyed by the war. It was also the late 1940s. In the 1930s the New Deal had shifted a lot of power from the rich capital owners to workers, but because of the waning years of the depression and then WWII, nobody had really seen the fruits of that work. Suddenly in the late 40s, the war ended, the US economy was in a huge boom because it was the only place in the world that could still make things, and workers had all kinds of hard-won protections.
This was never going to be sustainable. Eventually the rest of the world was going to rebuild, which was going to result in more competition, and a relative weakening of the US economy. But, the post-war years also saw union power getting weaker and weaker. A significant part of that was that organized labour smelled a lot like communism, which was the scary enemy from the end of WWII to the 90s. So... no communism, no organized labour, nobody to push back on the rich as they consolidated power.
Also, inflation isn't really the issue, it's that workers don't have the power to demand that their wages go up as well. And, of course, with so many workers supporting an anti-union, pro-business party like the GOP, worker power is going to stay near zero.
Are TVs and things really shorter lived? I remember my parents having theirs forever, but I was like 8 years old. Everything felt like forever. That 21" TV that lasted most of my childhood was probably only about six or seven years old when they swapped it out for a bigger one.
Meanwhile as an adult my TV still feels new because I remember paying for it, but it is already 7 years old. And I'm not thinking of replacing it yet.
For computers I had a Spectrum +3 which felt like I had it for a lifetime, but looking at release dates for that and what I replaced it with, I must have used it for 5 years tops, and the same for the Amiga 1200 I replaced it with. Modern consoles have about a 7 year lifespan. They're cheaper too, when you take inflation into account.
Housing is fucked. Although I do think too many people have this weird idea that they need to live in big cities or popular areas. You can live in a smaller place. They have electricity, internet and food. You'll survive.
Having seen a lot of failed tv/monitors I'd say they fail easier since we went lcd. The polarizing films get vinegar syndrome, and the LED lens start popping off from aging adhesive at around 10 years.
Beyond that LEDs start failing because of excessive heat depending on the backlight settings in the same timeframe and when one or two have problems it usually cascades into full failure - or trips a check in the TVs software to turn off the backlight making the TV unusable anyway.
Newer TVs usually have even more complexity and will likely fail quicker IMO.
I'll agree that a modern TV is unlikely to be economically repairable if it breaks. For the price of calling somebody out to look at it, you could have got a used (or even new) one that's still better than what you had.
Where the good old days you had a local TV repair man, who could fix the few things that went wrong with them. And chances are most TVs then had the exact same faults. It wasn't just a couple of circuit boards they no longer make that cost nearly the same as the whole TV.
My TVs and monitors have always been fairly reliable. Only really had one fail before I wanted to upgrade it anyway, and that was a cheap Samsung monitor that was pushing 15 years old. A £40 used one from CEX was just as good. I don't know if I've just been lucky, but I tend to stay away from the cheapo supermarket brands. If you're buying the Deal of The Week from Aldi, where they get you a 65" TV for under £400 then you might have less luck.
15 years isn't really that long. Older tvs could last decades. My grandparents are still using a TV they bought at least 30 years ago. My other set of grandparents have some tvs still functioning that are even older than that.
My dad bought a small electric fan in the 70s. It still works (he gave it to me.)
I bought a taller fan in the 00s. The motor burned twice in 5 years and then I couldn't find where to repair it anymore.
I'm in Canada. Even smaller cities are absolutely fucked for house prices or rent right now
I had to laugh when somebody in my office found a house for £25,000 in the middle of my nearby city.
"It's a nice one too!" he said, pointing at the picture.
I looked over his shoulder. "Mate, that's the price for the parking space in front of it."
The property sites are a minefield though. The parking paces are obvious enough to people with eyes, but the amount of cheaper properties and then you see it's for part ownership...
Capitalism in action, wages will rise to meet bare necessities plus replacement, and fall to that level as well, regardless of productivity levels.