I Find the Return from "Cheap But Disposable" to "Expensive But Reparable" Interesting

Kimberlee Josephson, writing at the Foundation for Economic Education, spins a fun yarn about the difference between Gen X/early millennials versus later millennials/Gen Z. That's not how she puts it, but that's how I read it. I won't spoil it for you, but here's MY takeaway:

Growing up as (early) Gen X, I lived through a period where almost everything became cheap ... too cheap to bother repairing if it broke. Transistor radios, cheap stereos and television sets, etc. If it stopped working, it was almost certainly cheaper to just buy a new one than to haul the old one to a shop and hope it could get fixed. Hell, earlier in this century I distinctly remember transistor radios with little earbuds for sale at Dollar Tree (when all the stuff there really was priced at just one dollar).

For me, that extended even to computers. I've never taken a computer to a shop for repair. Either I could repair it myself (e.g. replacing a fan or CD-ROM drive that had died), or I got a new (to me) machine (in fairness, often at a garage sale or thrift store).

But now there are shops that seem to do a great deal of business repairing phones, tablets, computers, etc. 

Just like there used to be lots of shops you could go to to get a radio, television, or vacuum cleaner repaired, or clothes altered because you gained or lost weight or were handing them down to someone a little taller or shorter, etc.

Those shops were disappearing (mostly, anyway) by the time I was a teenager. Now they're back for a new generation of gear that's expensive enough and reparable enough to sustain a dedicated business sector. Particularly with respect to expensive smart phones -- they're worth replacing the screen on. So that kind of shop is back.