Are we heading toward idiocracy?

[Dave_C]

As long as America wants cheap products and we will run to Wal-Mart to get it, they will keep making it! When we stop buying it, they will quit making it.

We want high wages but cheap products. Not sure you can have both. Quality cost money!

Dave C.

[Harold_V]

Key to success, here, is not being paid UNEARNED wages. I will say no more, as this will turn political quickly.

We, as Americans, have lost our way. We demand pay well beyond our worth, and expect there is a free lunch.

There is no free lunch.

Harold

[thomas harris]

nothing cheap about the price of a whirlpool duet washer/dryer set. i did not provide the written warranty on these units they did. i am also sure sales distributors boast these warrantees as major selling points.

[SteveM]

As long as America wants cheap products and we will run to Wal-Mart to get it,

One flip side to that is that you can save so much money buying stuff at WalMart that you can finally afford to buy a new car.

Sometimes, it pays to get quality, other times, not so much.

I buy good quality tools and keep them forever, but sometimes you just need a cheap tool to use once a year and Harbor Freight is good enough.

I'm not sure, though, that I even have the option of buying a good laundry machine or dishwasher.

Steve

[redneckalbertan]

nothing cheap about the price of a whirlpool duet washer/dryer set. i did not provide the written warranty on these units they did. i am also sure sales distributors boast these warrantees as major selling points.

I am going to make the argument that they are cheep... relatively speaking. If we take a look at appliance prices from the 1950's in relation to the wage of back then and compare it to now there is a huge differance and we now have the ability to buy much more.

The average wage in 1950 was $2799.16. Price for a washer and dryer $494.90. With one years salery you could buy almost 5.7 washer dryer sets.
The average wage in 2011 was $42979.61. Price for a whirlpool duet set is 2369.98. With one years salery you could buy 18.1 sets.

Looking at the prices from 1950, a toaster was $21.00 (133 toasters/years salery). Walmart.com sells toasters for anywhere between $15 and $90 (478 to 2865 toasters/yearly salery).

ht tp://www.thepeoplehistory.com/50selectrical.html
ht tp://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html
ht tp://www.sears.com/search=whirlpool%20duet%2 ... SKIP_LEVEL
ht tp://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng.do?sea ... 4&cat_id=0

[Dave_C]

All good repies and feedback (IMHO)

Not sure we are still on topic with the orginal poster but hey, we are looking for a better part to make the washing machine more durable.

I'll share this then I'll shut up. (oh yeah, sure)

One of the reasons I can not get any of my inventions into production is, and these are not my words, "You over design everything". And yes I do. I'm old school. I want to make a product that you only need to buy one time in a life span. I know that is not reasonable for toasers and the like but Washers, Dryers, Fridges, Lawn Mowers and the like should last much longer than they do today.

For example: The frigidaire that my Grandmother had is 40 years old and still doing as good a job today as when it was bought. Yes, it is not energy efficient and does not self defrost, but it is still running. Cost, about $400.00 back then. Today, recently I paid $2,000 for a new fridge and have been told by several who have bought simulair products they theirs failed in under two years.

(Big sigh, down off the soap box)

Dave C.

[SteveM]

One of the reasons I can not get any of my inventions into production is, and these are not my words, "You over design everything". And yes I do. I'm old school.

That reminds me of when my brother quit his job as a mechanic. As my dad was helping him load up his tools on the last day, the owner said to my dad something like this:

"You know what your son's problem is? He wants every car to leave here better than when it came in!".

My dad said how can you even argue with a guy like that.

Steve

[david5605]

My pet peeve is all the expensive printed circuitry crap in dishwashers and clothes dryers/washers.

15 years ago we had those clunky rotary timers and mechanical switches that we would complain about because we had to replace them every 8-10 years.

Now its all integrated touch circuitry where the cheapest replacement part is $150 + the service call. All because some stupid membrane switch quit working.

I watched the Miele repairman 'try' to fix my daughters high dollar dish washer. His diagnostic charts indicated $175 circuit board, smaller than your hand, was the problem. 3 weeks to get part. Didn't fix it. Oh yeah, got charged for 2nd service call to put it in. Chart next said $350 board at fault. In the old days it would have been a $20 mechanical switch.

Threw Miele dishwasher out and bought some high dollar pos from lowes. Probably no better than the one we threw away but at least it works.

Don't get me started on high dollar front loader clothes dryers/washers.lucky daughter has service contract on them.

Then there's high dollar coffee pots with $200 circuit boards in them.

[thomas harris]

got parts and it is washing clothes again. same cheapness in new part. unless the grade of aluminum has greater corrosion resistance.

[tornitore45]

The average wage in 1950 was $2799.16. Price for a washer and dryer $494.90. With one years salery you could buy almost 5.7 washer dryer sets.
The average wage in 2011 was $42979.61. Price for a whirlpool duet set is 2369.98. With one years salery you could buy 18.1 sets.

This analysis is too simplistic, it assumes that no productivity improvement has followed from automation, CNC, CAD, and all the productivity improvement ripple effect of each cost contributor.

I would expect that the same effort I placed in one year of work in 2012 produced more than 3 times as much as what I would have produced in 1950 (I was in elementary school).

Just to trow an example... we did not have storage oscilloscope in 1960, to debug a (power supply) circuit and "catch the problem in the act" we set up the Polaroid camera an go through a package of expensive film before we got the time base, the trigger, the trace intensity and the problem to happen before we had a trace to examine. Call it 1/2 an hour and $20 material.

Today a storage scope can take 1 second worth of data with a resolution to zoom in at 100nS events, the same problem is now 2 minutes to set up and $0 material.

[tornitore45]

The debate of cost versus quality and the "you get what you pay for" is pretty old but is not all.
In the last 30 years or so an ever increasing number of product have been offered with such low quality that fail to be useful.
Drill that have rubbery grip, enbedded bevel, keyless chuck that fail to grip and spin the bit with any torque.
They "look" like drills but they were never intended to operate like one, just raise the image of a good drill in the mind of the potential customer. (OK if Johnny Homeowner wants to drill 4 1/4" holes in Gypsum board to hang a couple of towel bars in his downtown apartment, he will not be disappointed)

Compact Fluorescent Light that are supposed to last 10,000 hrs but have caps rated 2000hrs @ 85C when they operate easily at 100C

The attached file shows a scketch of an arbitrary quality versus cost
The point is that below a certain cost nobody on earth can produce a functional widget, no matter how low you are willing to compromise on the definition of functional. If you visualize the quality versus cost plot there is slippery slope leading to a cliff were the last penny pulled will guarantee failure. The ancient last straw that starved the donkey.
I am familiar with electronic so I talk about that but it apply to any industry. All electronic design today lay on the barely safe side of the slippery slope, at the time when the product is qualified for production. That region is the most competitive, given that on one side you have higher cost and on the other side you have way to many out of the box returns.
After you add in tolerances, aging, and the relentless demand for cost reduction imposed on each component manufacture very little life is left.

The public did not ask for marginal product, the competing free marked coupled with an uneducated consumer followed the only natural path toward equilibrium which is today state of affairs.

Marketing and packaging makes it nearly impossible for the average consumer to distinguish between cheap junk, expensive junk and value stuff.

At this point I feel my political juices start flowing so I better stop.