Your toaster dies the second you unbox it. Pants rip on day one. The quality of everything is trash now. This is what bigheaded people call enshittification. Companies deliberately design products to break right after the warranty. This is due to the so-called “Hunt for Infinite growth.” Steady profits ain’t enough. They need MORE, so they skimp, shrink packages, and shove everything behind subscriptions. Infinite growth is a plague, and it hurts your personal finance.
Disclaimer: This video is satirical commentary and for entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice.
Paying $5 for a new tshirt in America does make you at least responsible, though. Think of how many resources goes into that. Someone has to cut and sew that shit. It’s slave labor to receive a product that’s garbage and won’t fit after a wash. If you’re doing things like this you shouldn’t wonder why your own labor is worth so little.
Increasingly more people can’t pay for basics like rent and food, is it far fetched that they won’t pay 25-30$ for a t-shirt when they are indebting themselves more each month?
If you can afford ethically sourced clothes and you buy crap on Amazon, you are definitely a problem.
But if you just scrape by, you shouldn’t be blamed for buying a 5$ t-shirt.
Thrifting is a great way to ethically buy clothes. You can often find brand new $50+ shirts with tags for ~$5. I have a full closet of higher end apparel that cost me < $200.
Although it is a time investment, which is another thing poor people are often short on.