One of America's biggest problems is a lack of appreciation of quality. Most of us buy products with price first in mind and quality, workmanship, and durability distantly second. This fact, aside from turning the United States into a "throwaway society," has damaged our economy in many ways. First, and perhaps most important, there is now little market for the work of a skilled craftsman. Furniture, automobiles, and even buildings are made in factories by machines and assembly lines. Most notably, this practice has diminished the value of skilled labor and tradesmanship. While workers once took pride in their crafts and products, today's assembly techniques encourage workers to take the attitude that theirs is "just a job." Quality suffers as a result of this attitude, and so does worker morale. Second, consumers waste untold amounts of money replacing products that prematurely fail. There's no sense repairing a product that can be cheaply replaced. But this approach wastes resources and turns consumers into reckless spenders. After all, what's the use of shopping carefully for an item if it is certain to be replaced within a few years anyway? Even more significantly, perhaps, the replace/do not repair …show more content…
After all, it seems logical that consumers will buy more televisions, for example, if they last five years instead of ten. But this temporary economic benefit is unsound, and the long-term effect of it is economic deterioration. The reason for this is simple. By purchasing many goods of poor quality, consumers encourage the development of businesses that make money through cutthroat price competition. The result is usually exploited workers, wasted resources, and damage to competing reputable firms. These "garbage peddlers" rarely last long, and so their workers are soon unemployed and the contribution to the economy turns into a