Garbage
The average American throws away something like 6.5 pounds of trash and garbage every day. Anyway that’s what I’ve heard and because of that we are accused of being extremely wasteful.
I don’t know anyone who willfully throws away as much as they can for the sheer joy of it. Rather it’s more a situation where people have no choice. Here’s the problem as I see it –
I buy a toaster that lasts a year then breaks. It cannot be fixed so I have to throw it away. Virtually all manufactured consumer products are made that way today. So part of my 6.5 pounds is manufactured products that I would not throw away if they had not broken or if they could have been repaired.
I buy some groceries at the store and bring them home to make a few meals. I carry them home in a bag – I throw that away. Some of the products were in bags inside boxes. Some were individually wrapped. Part of my 6.5 pounds is unnecessary wrapping and containers.
I open my mailbox. Most of the material inside is unsolicited ads urging me to buy products or services I don’t need and never will. Part of my 6.5 pounds is unwanted advertisements.
Whose fault is it that I throw away so much trash? It’s not mine! It’s the economy we live in and I didn’t design it.
Here’s the way it works, as I understand it. If a product breaks or wears out, the manufacturer gets to sell more of them. If the product is fixable, the manufacturer doesn’t get to sell as many. It is far more profitable to manufacture products that break, wear out or are umrepairable. The reason anything works at all is because people won’t buy the stuff if it doesn’t work. And they won’t buy it if it wears out too quickly. (focus groups and product studies can help to get just the right life span for a product).
Does this market approach seem a little dishonest to you? It does to me. It also tells me we are being poor stewards with our resources. If enough stuff gets purchased, used and discarded, the whole world will eventually become a dump. Such a thing probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but can’t we do better than that?
If there were a hundred times more businesses and they could all compete on even ground, such wastefulness would be much less likely to continue. Such would be the case if income taxes and property taxes (both business and private taxes) were replaced with a progressive retail sales tax. A progressive tax is one where the rate is determined by the volume of sales – the higher the sales volume, the higher the sales tax rate. The tax rate would be such that a customer would spend the same for an item no matter if he bought it in the tiny store on the corner or the mega-mart on the edge of town.
I don’t know anyone who willfully throws away as much as they can for the sheer joy of it. Rather it’s more a situation where people have no choice. Here’s the problem as I see it –
I buy a toaster that lasts a year then breaks. It cannot be fixed so I have to throw it away. Virtually all manufactured consumer products are made that way today. So part of my 6.5 pounds is manufactured products that I would not throw away if they had not broken or if they could have been repaired.
I buy some groceries at the store and bring them home to make a few meals. I carry them home in a bag – I throw that away. Some of the products were in bags inside boxes. Some were individually wrapped. Part of my 6.5 pounds is unnecessary wrapping and containers.
I open my mailbox. Most of the material inside is unsolicited ads urging me to buy products or services I don’t need and never will. Part of my 6.5 pounds is unwanted advertisements.
Whose fault is it that I throw away so much trash? It’s not mine! It’s the economy we live in and I didn’t design it.
Here’s the way it works, as I understand it. If a product breaks or wears out, the manufacturer gets to sell more of them. If the product is fixable, the manufacturer doesn’t get to sell as many. It is far more profitable to manufacture products that break, wear out or are umrepairable. The reason anything works at all is because people won’t buy the stuff if it doesn’t work. And they won’t buy it if it wears out too quickly. (focus groups and product studies can help to get just the right life span for a product).
Does this market approach seem a little dishonest to you? It does to me. It also tells me we are being poor stewards with our resources. If enough stuff gets purchased, used and discarded, the whole world will eventually become a dump. Such a thing probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but can’t we do better than that?
If there were a hundred times more businesses and they could all compete on even ground, such wastefulness would be much less likely to continue. Such would be the case if income taxes and property taxes (both business and private taxes) were replaced with a progressive retail sales tax. A progressive tax is one where the rate is determined by the volume of sales – the higher the sales volume, the higher the sales tax rate. The tax rate would be such that a customer would spend the same for an item no matter if he bought it in the tiny store on the corner or the mega-mart on the edge of town.
posted by Sam | 8:38 PM
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