Dakota Smith
Consumerism
Dr. Stapley
Writing 101
October 10, 2013

As individuals that live in a sustainable economy we have each felt the hand of consumerism smack us in the back of our noggins. It is not so much a skeptical approach to consumerism as it is an approach to depicting reality. Simplifying the equation those of us whom are far from wealthy better be playing the lottery every day of our lives if we seek unfathomable fortunes. Consumerism as I wish to approach the matter is an idealistic, agonizing and corrupted economic system in which the benefits are reaped by the monopolies running America. The problem with this concept is the quality of the goods and the effect felt by the consumers which are the core for consumerism. Whether plausible or not the fact that manufactures design their products to have a limited life span indicates that the consumers are not on the minds of the corporations making obscene amounts of currency. This concept is known as planned obsolesce and is abundantly apparent in numerous products. Headphones or ear-buds are one of the most notorious products distributed by nearly every consumer able bodied location from retail stores to gas stations. Now when an individual purchases this product one would assume without causing any harm to the device it should be able to last a few years. Unfortunately on average ear-buds tend to last only slightly over 3 months. The kicker is that the manufacturer’s warranty only last 90 days so it forces you to purchase the same product, or a similar product, almost immediately after “nothing can be done”. If that wasn’t enough another investigation led me to the truth about the corporations. Other than simply planned-obsoleting their products the prices are also marked up roughly twenty times the manufacturing cost. That means that if a cord cost the consumer twenty dollars it only took one dollar for the corporation to produce! By using this method the owners of the companies are making unbelievable salaries and living the high life. The effect of the mark-ups and production failures planned by the companies leaves the consumer, which is the core for consumerism, in the bottom of a gulch with no hope of climbing out. The loop that is consumerism restricts everyone whom is not privileged to have been involved with the nepotism of a corporation to a position of never ending forty hour work weeks and countless hours craving an opportunity to escape. The Wal-Mart Company is owned by the wealthiest family in America, the Waltons. With a staggering 150 billion dollars this monopoly pays their