Lately a lot of TV's are showing up on freecycle. Big ones, pretty new ones. I had a 19" that I use to watch films on, but now I have a 27" one waiting for me to hook it up (my phone and internet service comes with cable too, at no extra cost).

Paying for a tv that is primarily used to subject me to advertising seems stupid. Free works, and now I'll just make sure I'm at least 7 feet away and know that there is no resolution lost!

You no longer get what you pay for except in the highest-end purchases, and I can't guarantee you get it there either (as I don't shop there, lol!)

IMO there are two trends -- no, three -- that have really made things bad in the last 15 years or so. First and most important is the fact that actual wages stayed stagnant, or decreased while actual costs of living increased a lot across the board (utilities, food, most especially housing -- it hasn't just been the last year or so). Wal-Mart won because it literally made it possible for a lot of people to maintain their standard of living--especially the humble standards of living--when wages didn't. I opposed Wal-Mart, but now it's literally the only place in the county for most of the things it carries. It drove the others out of business----but I was already on the verge of not being able to afford anything in those other places at that time.

Second is the creation of a lot of "necessities" that really aren't. Cell phones are a primary example, but there are many. We did perfectly fine without them. All of them. Yes, we did. Yes, we *did.*! They are not a necessity, but almost everyone I know has them even if they have trouble paying their water bill. They could pay the water bill, if they didn't think not having to write a grocery list somehow was more important than having water. People who really needed to be reachable anywhere, any time, used to have radios, then pagers. Our sense of priorities has gotten really tweaked lately. And a lot of things that used to be free or free-ish now cost significant $ even though the free version's still available.

Third is the fact that everything is pure junk, made to fail -- flashy, though. The cell phones might be replaced after 8 months, but they, and the big screen TVs, and the plastic fittings on everything we own, the computers, are going to self-destruct (unrepairable, natch) in very short order, even when you pay a lot for them!!! Those that do last a few years become obsolete ever faster and unsupported for repairs sometimes as fast a 1 year. My appliances are all at least 20 years old and still doing OK, they are almost entirely metal, and I don't want a new washer or dryer or fridge when these go down - I'd prefer them to be at least 10 years old. The thing is, I'm kind of running out of time -- because at 20 years, they were probably made with some quality, but at 10 years, that had already pretty much been dispensed with. Just the idea of paying thousands for a built-in new fridge that I already know from friends' experiences won't last 4 years or survive even one power outage . . . replacing all your electronics and appliances every 2-3 years is something we never reckoned on. It's really expensive!

Somewhere I got more resistant to cultural imperatives like getting cell phones - I just do a cost/benefit analysis and if I don't get full value or more in benefits, I don't get the thing. Because I don't need the thing.

I wear a 20+ year old pair of Limmer's.

I make incredibly high quality fleecewear, serious winter snow layers for extremely cold weather. It's a seasonal business but for 17 years this family business has been a wholesale manufacturer to ski resort shops and retail snowboard/ski shops...

and I'm dying. I cannot compete with 10 year old slave girls in China or Vietnam or Burma or Indonesia or Guatemala etc etc. I used to hire local seamstresses for preseason order time, piecework summer/early fall, now I don't. I rarely get an order for any coats or vests or anything anymore, never from retail shops but occasionally a custom off the website, so this little shop has now de-volved into a hat & accessory builder. And it's because I cannot live on 50 cents an hour labor. Period.

Yes we did do it to ourselves but we also have had stagnant and falling wages since the mid-70s compared to the climbing price of the basics-food/rent/utilites etc since then. Hell, my dad bought his house in 1970 cheaper than I paid for a year-old Toyota pickup in 1994! Stagnant wages yet we have more shit around us. Ain't credit a wonderful thing??

We survived Nafta/Gatt even, added ski resorts and shops and were doing okay because the shop owners and buyers really like the quality and designs and that it was made in USA
(no it will never be a Patagonia lol). But when Bushieboy signed the 'most favored trade nation' with the brutal dictatorship of China and imports surged 4,000 percent that year alone...fuck me. One resort retail manager showed me these cheap fleece coats he gets, with their logo embroidered on them: $8 fucking dollars per unit wholesale price. They sell them for $50. The material and the zippers for that cost me more than $8 (I do use far better materials, pride of workmanship I guess). Big sigh.

But yeah, with the price of deisel screaming up things just may turn around. You know how many hundreds of gallons those clunker boats use per hour steaming all that shit across the Pacific? Makes the trucking industry look like their driving hybrid 18 wheelers! I wonder just how long before those 'marts start jacking prices for all that cheap crap!!!

<<Skylar, I gotta tell you, if you try hard enough, you can find almost anything still made in USA. For example, most New Balance Sneakers are Made IN USA. You Just have to take the time to find a product made somewhere else than China.>>

Really? Stuff is still made in the USA? I have to be honest I can't remember the last item I bought that was US made, clothes are pretty universally made in the 3rd world it seems like, I wear Eddie Bauer a lot - work corporate casual, and they are 3rd world manufactured, my electronics are all japanese, I am sure even my MAC isnt made domestically, you would have to pay me to buy an American car, even mercedes reliablility and quality went into the crapper when it merged with Chrysler a few years back, I can't think of anything actually still made in america & that is good quality, I am sure that there are some small niche market items out there but for the most part America is a consumer society not a manufacturer anymore, part of the problem now days.