Consumer Spending Increases; Healthy or Ill?

New York Times Headline reads: Discounts Help Lift Back-to-School Sales.

“Back-to-school season started off on sale… that lead to a decent 3.3 percent increase in revenue… a 3 percent increase and above ‘represents a healthy US customer,’ said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Thomson Reuters.”

Do they expect revenue for stores to just increase and increase and increase? When will there come a time when people are satisfied and say “Enough,” and stores stop trying to cheat us by making their clothes more and more cheaply so they can make more profit?

I only need so many clothes a year. You only need so many clothes a year. If you go through five pairs of jeans a year, then you buy five pair of jeans next year. However, if they start making jeans so they wear out faster and you go through more than five pairs, then you do need more clothing. This is immoral of the stores.

In a more ideal situation, people would make clothing that are long lasting, at a cost that covered the labor and materials and paid the clothes maker a wage enough to live. Making clothes that lasted a long time would make the cost of clothing less for the clothes maker, because he would have to buy them less frequently, and therefore he would need to charge less money for his clothes because he would need less to live on.

Posted by Bonnie under Uncategorized