They don't make 'em like they used to...

[An Officer]

I've noticed the quality of pretty much everything is falling very steeply, especially in the current state of the economy... food and clothes brands that I've been buying for years just don't taste nor feel the same anymore.

I remember really enjoying the taste of chocolates like Quality Street and Roses as a child, but now, they make me want to gag - they've substituted all the good stuff for rubbish. They are in the same packaging, but the contents have nothing to do with one another.

I used to buy perfectly good quality basic tops and t-shirts from H&M, but the stuff they sell now won't survive the first wash. I have a t-shirt purchased there more than 10 years ago which still looks brand new, though it must have been washed 1000 times by now. I've had to switch to a slightly more expensive brand, just to get a similar quality - but even they have started doing rubbish as I saw in my last visit! They have reduced the quality of 90% of their lines, and so, you have to look long and hard to find the good fabrics - well-woven and soft. If I have to upgrade yet again, I don't think I'll be able to afford to keep it up once my old stuff wears out.

Just 5 years ago - I could buy a pair of fantastic quality leather shoes for around £30. Right now, I'd struggle to find a good quality pair of flip flops for that. In fact, my last pair of Havaianas were about £25. I used to do just fine with a local market pair for a fiver which would last years. Now, you just can't get away with that, they fall apart in 2 days.

At the beginning of this winter, I realised I needed to get a pair of warm house shoes, as it was particularly cold, and my last pair (which were less than £10) had seen better days. I went to various department stores and tried many, but the only pair on a par with my previous cost £45! I was not happy, but I paid it, it was that or get frostbite on my toes with the cold draft that blows through our old flat!

I can't even buy a cup of friggin' coffee without spitting it out, as the quality has deteriorated so much (Starbucks!). I'm finding I have to avoid big multinational chains on the whole in order to get good value, as they are too greedy and unethical, the minute they meet with a little success, it is not enough, they have to double the profit by undercutting the quality. The cost of things and the actual quality have become miles apart.

I honestly believe I live in a society in decline, it has reached its peak already, and now it's on a course of self-destruct. If things continue as they are, with pay not increasing by much, and the cost of things sky rocketing as steeply as the quality is plummeting, I dread to think where we'll be in 20 years. Only the very wealthy will have access to the good things in life, I guess.

I guess it's like boiling a frog, you turn the heat up so slowly, he doesn't notice the changes.

How are things where you are in the world? Are you noticing changes? This is a post that should have been written by an OAP, right? Things weren't like this in my day, you know!

 

[JarodRussell]

I get a similar strange feeling of deterioration everywhere. Companies, products, people, social interaction, movies, shows, music, art, everywhere.

 

[EnsignAmy]

I honestly believe I live in a society in decline, it has reached its peak already, and now it's on a course of self-destruct.

I think society's going to be just fine. But then maybe I'm just an incurable optimist.

 

[Shazam!]

I'm fairly certain that every generation feels the same, but I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't noticed a general decline in the make-up of our (UK) towns and cities which is surely due in part to over-population in those areas (I'm not getting into the immigration debate though).

 

[Jadzia]

My parents always taught me to buy quality things, and if I can't afford to, then I should go without and save up until I can... which is how I try to live.

I've noticed the trend of falling quality for some time, to the extent that I now feel discouraged from buying things. That's right -- I have money that I want to spend, but the quality of what is available isn't good enough for me, so I don't want a lot of what is available.

So... I began teaching myself how to make things, and I find pleasure in doing so.

I honestly believe I live in a society in decline, it has reached its peak already, and now it's on a course of self-destruct. If things continue as they are, with pay not increasing by much, and the cost of things sky rocketing as steeply as the quality is plummeting, I dread to think where we'll be in 20 years. Only the very wealthy will have access to the good things in life, I guess.

I'm sure that many wealthy people would love to return us to the class system that existed in the Victorian days: The lower class were driven to work hard and kept the country running, but were kept on the breadline, so were unable to rise above their class and unable to access decent education (Extortionate tuition fees) nor could they afford higher quality goods. In the absence of an adequate welfare state, the lower class were forced to fend for themselves, relying on the community to organise things and provide charity where necessary (aka the Big Society).

 

[Shazam!]

I'm sure that many wealthy people would love to return us to the class system that existed in the Victorian days: The lower class were driven to work hard and kept the country running, but were kept on the breadline, so were unable to rise above their class and unable to access decent education (Extortionate tuition fees) nor could they afford higher quality goods. In the absence of an adequate welfare state, the lower class were forced to fend for themselves, relying on the community to organise things and provide charity where necessary (aka the Big Society).

Tory government in a nutshell.

 

[RoJoHen]

I honestly believe I live in a society in decline,

...

How are things where you are in the world? Are you noticing changes?

Well, here in America, my generation is supposedly going to be the very first generation in the history of the country to be worse off than the previous generation. Every generation has always done better than the one that came before...until now. My parents may have been America's peak generation in terms of income and employment. They aren't particularly thrilled with that notion.

I am hoping this is just a temporary situation and that we will eventually figure out how to get our shit back together, but right now it's not looking good.

That said, my quality of life hasn't changed much, and I haven't really noticed a huge decline in the quality of the products I buy. Some companies are improving their products in an attempt to jump start the economy and get people buying things again.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Overall quality of consumer goods has deteriorated, but there are several reasons for that, and they aren't all nefarious:

1. Scale. Consumer products are manufactured on a much larger scale than ever before. This results in a greater number of defective products, in raw terms.
2. Price competition. Manufacturing of basically any type is extremely competitive, often with razor-thin margins. To make your products cheaper, you can use cheaper materials, not keep your equipment as up-to-date, hire less experienced/skilled workers (as you can pay them less), and cut quality control and quality assurance. All of these result in lower end quality of the product.
3. Planned obsolescence. If someone can buy one of your widgets and have it work for 20 years, they'll never buy another. If, however, the quality of the materials and workmanship are cut down so that it only lasts 2 or 3 years, then you can get people to buy your widgets more frequently. If it's cheap enough, people won't care that it'll wear out in a couple years. Since everyone is competing on a price basis, they're all cutting quality and resulting in shorter product lifespans.

It's kind of unfair to take a $50 microwave from today and compare it to a $200 microwave from the early '80s. Taking inflation into account, that $200 microwave actually cost $442 in today's money. Now, is it really fair to bitch about the quality of a $50 device not living up a $400+ device?

Price competition has indeed reduced quality but it's also made things a hell of a lot more affordable and available to people who never could've bought them before. Today, you can get a $500 computer that does everything most people would need it for. A decent computer 25 years ago would run you well over $1000.

Are the more expensive (and thus higher-quality) products still out there? You betcha. People just don't want to pay for quality. They want something that's "good enough" and don't care if they'll have to replace it in a couple years, as long as they can get it dirt cheap today.

As for society as a whole being in decline: meh. In the Western world, people are living longer, healthier lives than at any time in history. Crime is down, education is up, science is advancing, religious dogmatism is in retreat (fundamentalist flare-ups notwithstanding), and so on and so on. We have our problems--serious ones--but so does every era. We'll survive.

I will say the US needs serious reform in the way our economy is structured, though. The current model is royally fucked up and is sapping the country's wealth, destroying the middle class, and screwing future generations before they're even out of diapers. I do not think any of these problems are insurmountable, though.

 

[TheBrew]

Things are always better in the past.

Always.

 

[TerokNor]

Well everythings is a LOT more expensive than it was, especially since the Euro came along. The quality however is ok.

What scares me is the rent/ pension. I still have nearly 40 years to work, but I guess that when I am old I will live in poverty (should I get old). Great.
My generation will be the one getting to feel the demographic development a lot, too many old people, no children, means no money for the old.
Are you scared to live in poverty at an old age?
Also our health-care system seems to get more and more a first and second class citizin system (with me belonging to the second class).

Sometimes it does feel as if society will fall apart in not so long, yes.
But I want to be optimistic...and in comparison with many other countries people in my country live in heaven (no war, no earthquakes, vulcanos, tornados etc, enough to eat, enough water, staate money for the unemployed .... ).

TerokNor

 

[JRS]

Im not sure if the quality has fallen so much..maybe it seems so, because people used stuff longer back in the "old days".
For exsample, can you imagine people using the same cellphone or television that they bought 10 years from now?
People use and then replace a lot these days, so no wonder products are often designed to be less durable than before.

 

[JarodRussell]

I blame the "value return on investment over anything" attitude that seems to have infested every corner of life in the last few years. Also it seems to me like fundamentalism (doesn't matter about which issue) is getting stronger with people, which is pretty bad.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

People use and then replace a lot these days, so no wonder products are often designed to be less durable than before.

It's the other way around. It's called "programmed obsolescence".

And no, I don't agree with the OP. I think the overall quality of things has improved since I was a kid.

 

[trekkiedane]

[about footwear]

Frogstar B was thrown into poverty through an event termed the Shoe Event Horizon. Many years ago, Frogstar World B was "a thriving, happy planet--people, cities, shops, a normal world." However, there were slightly too many shoe shops on the high streets of the planet, and the number of shoe shops was steadily increasing. The more shoe shops there were, the more the shops had to make, and the more they had to make, the worse and more unwearable the shoes became. And the worse and more unwearable the shoes became, the more the people had to buy, and the more money the shops made until it became economically impossible to build anything other than shoe shops. The result was collapse, ruin, and famine. Most of the population died out, but a select few with the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds and cursed the ground.

Thirty years ago my grandma bought a drying rack -I inherited it and it's still going strong -two years ago my upstairs neighbour bought a similar rack which is now falling apart. Planned obsolescence has indeed gone awry

I think it's a bit unfair to mention things like computers and cell-phones in a thread like this; those devices have been (and are still) -to some degree- in development.

TVs, however, I'd expect a (not low end) TV bought today to last a couple of decades -but I doubt if it would.

Furniture, has become part of the fashion industry and as long as people buy new furniture every couple of years, simply because they tire of the look of it, there's no reason to make quality furniture any more. The same -of course- goes for anything else that has trends; one year shoes have to be brown and the next; black -why make shoes that last more than one season? T-shirts: I have all the T-shirts I'll ever need! -in colours that haven't been 'in' for over a decade AND with a logo on them for a company that doesn't exist any more- If you're willing to not be fashionable, there are plenty of quality products around

Yes, I too have noticed this trend towards more and more rubbish being pushed through the conventional channels.

But, I have also noticed that a great number of alternative channels for acquiring things have come into existence: I buy all of my coffee-beans from an art-gallery/shop! -sure it's a weird little shop, but if that's where I'll have to go to get decent coffee, then that's where I'll go! The same is true with pretty much everything else: consumer beware!; as long as enough people buy what's advertised on TV and get three for the price of two-stuff that's what the industry will deliver -and they'll even throw in a set of steak-knives for 'free'!

 

[Kestra]

I've noticed lower quality at certain clothes stores where I've shopped for years and years. Really terrible quality actually, not just the stitching but the fabric itself is awful. Then again I don't exactly shop at the nicest places! H&M has always been crap quality, at least in my experience.

 

[Mr Awe]

I'm 41 and I don't have the sense of *everything* falling apart. Some things, you bet, but not everything. I'd guess that some of the changes in taste that you mention are due to, sorry, age. Tastes change over the years. That's probably a larger factor than the substitutions that they've made. I've compared Dr Pepper with corn syrup head to head against the original version with sugar and the taste is very close.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

I honestly believe I live in a society in decline,

...

How are things where you are in the world? Are you noticing changes?

Well, here in America, my generation is supposedly going to be the very first generation in the history of the country to be worse off than the previous generation. Every generation has always done better than the one that came before...until now.

Sorry, but they already said that about my generation, one before yours I think. So you guys don't even have that distinction of being first!

Mr Awe

 

[An Officer]

Are you scared to live in poverty at an old age?

Not scared, no. I don't imagine it would be a barrel of laughs though. As long as I have enough food so as not to starve, and a roof over my head, that ought to be enough.

When you start complaining about the extras, that's when you know you're out of touch, and more than a little spoiled, as a lot of the world's population doesn't even have access to clean running water, let alone the fancy stuff.

So, yeah, I ought to get some perspective, but that doesn't mean I'm not a lot pissed at the lack of honest workmanship in this country. For example, our landlord had a couple of guys fitting a shower screen in our bathroom a fortnight ago, and apparently, this was too difficult, as they smashed one of the joints irreparably. Around the same time, my mother had half a dozen plumbers over to fix some noisy pipes... finally, a surveyor had to be called, as the plumbers were at a loss. The surveyor worked out it was a bolt of some kind, stray among the pipes, it was literally a 5 min job to remove it, but an army of workmen had been unable or unwilling to find the fault, each giving up after a few minutes or so of glancing around. There is no honesty anymore, no one wants to do an honest days work or take pride in applying themselves to their job! Incompetence, and lack of shame for the incompetence seems to be the way. Surely it doesn't take a surveyor at god knows how many £100s a day to take out a loose bolt jangling around the place!

 

[RandyS]

I get a similar strange feeling of deterioration everywhere. Companies, products, people, social interaction, movies, shows, music, art, everywhere.

That's called aging. It happens to all of us.

You'll understand when you're older.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

The quality of clothes and shoes in Australia has been absolute crap compared to the US for decades. The only thing that has changed is that a lot of stuff is dramatically cheaper now so you can view it as disposable.

And OP, Roses/Quality Street is really horrible mucky stuff these days, I agree.