> [T]he market has to prefer quality over price, and pay for it even when there is a cheaper, lower quality alternative.
That's really hard to do when so much of the market is living paycheck to paycheck. Many people want to choose quality, but simply can't afford it: their dishwasher is broken and they've got to steal from the food budget or the kids' Christmas gifts to fix it before Thanksgiving.
The decline in appliance quality has the same root cause as the rise of Walmart: real wages have stagnated and regressed since the halcyon days of heavy metal gauges and fifty year motors, and people simply can't afford to pay a premium for quality.
(They can't afford not to, either; "the poor man pays twice" and all that. But when you're living paycheck to paycheck it often seems like there's no real choice.)
It is hard to do, and it is harder for these folks to understand that paying for quality is cheaper than going for the lowest price. A $500 washing machine that lasts 50 years "costs" $10/year (after 50 years you'll have to replace it with another one). A $300 Washing Machine that lasts 10 years costs $30/year. Or conversely a $300 machine that lasts 10 years will be re-bought 5 times over a 50 year period ($1,500), but a $500 machine that lasts 50 years will be bought once ($500) over a 50 year period.
So buying the "quality" machine actually stretches your paycheck further because you won't be re-buying a machine in 10 years.
Of course it is really hard to help people understand that math, but once they do they can find a whole lot of cost savings in their lives.
You have to have a savings in order to amortize. Most people might have a few-hundred dollars that they need to feed a family and drive to work on until their next paycheck. This is the demographic that will pay $300 every ten years instead of $500 every 50, because they would have to choose not to eat for two weeks.
I agree with you that is the choice they would make, but stand by my point that it hurts them rather than helps.
I think you would find the book "Scarcity: Why having to little means so much" by Sendhil Mullainathan an interesting read.
What I got out of that book was that this behavior is built in at a much deeper level of our brains than you might expect and to counter it, and to get out of its grip, requires thoughtful action. In my case I find myself falling into these patterns with respect to spending time poorly when I don't have enough of it.
That's really hard to do when so much of the market is living paycheck to paycheck. Many people want to choose quality, but simply can't afford it: their dishwasher is broken and they've got to steal from the food budget or the kids' Christmas gifts to fix it before Thanksgiving.
The decline in appliance quality has the same root cause as the rise of Walmart: real wages have stagnated and regressed since the halcyon days of heavy metal gauges and fifty year motors, and people simply can't afford to pay a premium for quality.
(They can't afford not to, either; "the poor man pays twice" and all that. But when you're living paycheck to paycheck it often seems like there's no real choice.)