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squall571 t1_iz6n1oj wrote

The stuff sold at Macy’s back then was probably decent, now it’s mostly junk.

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yasth t1_iz79s94 wrote

Eh I mean it cost a lot more. I mean they were pushing 10% of household income for clothes and down to 3% now and for more pieces. The past 80 years are basically the story of money shifting out of clothes and food and into housing, non labor services(Amazon prime bills are way up since the 1940s) and electronics.

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Pennwisedom t1_iz89u61 wrote

Damn those 1940s people with their cheap Amazon prime purchases.

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PostureGai t1_iz91cbw wrote

>non labor services(Amazon prime bills

Huh? Most Amazon purchases are goods.

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yasth t1_iz9drw5 wrote

Amazon itself is a goods provider (actually it is a cloud computing company with a break even goods company attached, but I digress). Prime is a non labor service as it provides free shipping and entertainment.

I originally wrote cell phone bills if you'd like that. One important thing is that until the 40s there were more domestic servants than shop clerks. We went from direct employment that was pretty closely calibrated to work put in (even in the service sector, e.g. pay a cobbler more to repair a more difficult to repair shoe) to weird relationships like paying monthly for the fractional work of the software and network engineers that let you have MS office.

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PostureGai t1_iz9j17b wrote

Well if you wanna bifurcate it like that I'm sure the Prime subscription fees are way below what they gross in selling consumer goods.

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