[lookout123]

I understand the tangent Glatt and I'll readily agree that the quality of everyday mass consumption items has gone down. Of course to say that we have to compare them to items that weren't everyday mass consumption items when they were made.

My point is that the lower income brackets have filled their lives with stuff that would have been viewed as pure luxuries to the lower brackets thirty and forty years ago. Hell, I remember when my uncle got one of those big rear projection tv's in the late 70's - early '80's. EVERYONE knew about it. It was an event when someone in our low blue collar town made a luxury purchase like that. A new (used) car was worth whistling at for a week or two. I didn't know anyone who purchased a new-new car until I was in high school and that guy owned the biggest construction company in the area.

The quality of items may be lower, but that goes with mass production. If we remove the nostalgia from the equation it is fairly clear that the lower income brackets have access to much more than they did before. I'm not saying they shouldn't grow anymore, I'm just saying that while the rich have grown richer, so have the poor. We live in a society where it is a tragedy if someone can't have a cellphone from the company of their choosing.