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After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in 1950 and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of wastefullness could [[The System]] aspire in its “growth” toward [[Capitalism#Love_of_Money|Love of Money]]. | After being discharged from the Army Air Corps following end of the War in 1945, my dad wanted to buy a new car, but none were available. All industrial manufacturing had been drafted into the “war effort”, and there were even shortages of basic appliances like washing machines and refrigerators well into the late 40s after my parents married in 1946, their first child was born in 1948, before they bought a home in 1950 and began to furnish it. Only then were household goods more readily available. As commercial production returned, engineers again took up the question of [[Planned_obsolescence|Planned obsolescence]] that had first appeared in the mid 1920s and 30s — what level of [[Fashion]] or shoddiness (necessitating replacement of goods) would consumers tolerate, which is to ask, to what height of wastefullness could [[The System]] aspire in its “growth” toward [[Capitalism#Love_of_Money|Love of Money]]. | ||
The wastefullness of [[The System]] stood (and still stands even moreso today) in stark contrast to original [[Agrarianism]] of American culture in which frugality was practiced and desires by necessity restrained. [[Desire#William_Leach|William Leach]] chronicles how the change to new American culture of [[The System]] transpired, which hadn't yet touched my parents‘ families, not even in the 1940s when they were still mostly living an old culture life with few and limited consumer goods, much like the Amish. By the end of the 50s, my maternal grandparents had moved to town, but my grandfather still leased land to share crop cotton as he had before. My paternal grandparents were living on 200 acres settled by my great grandfather in 1880 when Comanches still roamed free across Texas. The original log cabin had decomposed, but the barn with two log cribs still stood, built from Post Oak trees that were felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, as well as from which the farmhouse was built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Nearly a century later up until the mid 70s, my grandparents were still mostly raising a vegetable garden, tending fruit trees (pears, peaches), keeping a dairy cow, raising beef cattle, hogs, and chickens, milking, cooking with the cream, and making butter and cottage cheese, buying chicks from a hatchery to raise for fryers, butchering chickens and hogs, making sausage, and smoking sausage, ham, and bacon. The land was poor, deep sandy soil, but the Soil Conservation Society had introduced my grandfather to peanut farming, by which he was able to make loan payments and not lose the farm. They didn't have much money but I never thought of them as poor, and because of boyhood experience of their life, I know that all the blather about economic “growth” raising people out of “poverty” is nothing but | The wastefullness of [[The System]] stood (and still stands even moreso today) in stark contrast to original [[Agrarianism]] of American culture in which frugality was practiced and desires by necessity restrained. [[Desire#William_Leach|William Leach]] chronicles how the change to new American culture of [[The System]] transpired, which hadn't yet touched my parents‘ families, not even in the 1940s when they were still mostly living an old culture life with few and limited consumer goods, much like the Amish. By the end of the 50s, my maternal grandparents had moved to town, but my grandfather still leased land to share crop cotton as he had before. My paternal grandparents were living on 200 acres settled by my great grandfather in 1880 when Comanches still roamed free across Texas. The original log cabin had decomposed, but the barn with two log cribs still stood, built from Post Oak trees that were felled by axe on the property. Lumber for framing the barn roof and attached sheds, as well as from which the farmhouse was built, was milled from the same Post Oak trees at a local sawmill. Nearly a century later up until the mid 70s, my grandparents were still mostly raising a vegetable garden, tending fruit trees (pears, peaches), keeping a dairy cow, raising beef cattle, hogs, and chickens, milking, cooking with the cream, and making butter and cottage cheese, buying chicks from a hatchery to raise for fryers, butchering chickens and hogs, making sausage, and smoking sausage, ham, and bacon. The land was poor, deep sandy soil, but the Soil Conservation Society had introduced my grandfather to peanut farming, by which he was able to make loan payments and not lose the farm. They didn't have much money but I never thought of them as poor, and because of boyhood experience of their life, I know that all the blather about economic “growth” raising people out of “poverty” is nothing but yet more [[Propaganda]] of the [[wikipedia:Big_lie|Big Lie]]. | ||
My mom was in high school during the war, and remembers her family having a ration book in which merchants kept track of what was bought per year, with restrictions on quantities, such as only 1 pair of shoes per person and 1 set of tires. If you used up rations in your book, then you could make no more purchases. In other words, America instituted a regulated, planned economy in the 1940s and that was alright by the monied capitalist industrialist powers since it enabled them to fatten themselves on war profits like [[wikipedia:Daddy_Warbucks|Daddy Warbucks]], but after the war such regulation was denounced (by way of [[Propaganda]] of the [[Propaganda#Ad_Council|Ad Council]]) as “socialism” and “communism” that threatened The American Way of life. From WWII, America learned that war was good for the economy (having lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression), and so [[The System]] grew powerful post War by way of [[Permanent war economy]], making “defense contractors” major employers along with Big [[Government]] bureaucracy, | My mom was in high school during the war, and remembers her family having a ration book in which merchants kept track of what was bought per year, with restrictions on quantities, such as only 1 pair of shoes per person and 1 set of tires. If you used up rations in your book, then you could make no more purchases. In other words, America instituted a regulated, planned economy in the 1940s and that was alright by the monied capitalist industrialist powers since it enabled them to fatten themselves on war profits like [[wikipedia:Daddy_Warbucks|Daddy Warbucks]], but after the war such regulation was denounced (by way of [[Propaganda]] of the [[Propaganda#Ad_Council|Ad Council]]) as “socialism” and “communism” that threatened The American Way of life. From WWII, America learned that war was good for the economy (having lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression), and so [[The System]] grew powerful post War by way of [[Permanent war economy]], making “defense contractors” major employers along with Big [[Government]] bureaucracy, | ||