Quoted from OLDPINGUY:I have been mowing lawns for over 50 years, and I love gardening.
However, Lawns, to me are the biggest waste of everything!!!
If we could eat what we cut, or feed livestock with it, Great!
For ornament, and its cost....what a waste of time.
Quoted from albummydavis:I got seriously sick about 10 yrs ago. Much to the dismay of my uptight neighbors, I decided my lawn can go to hell once I recovered. No one ever had “He had a fine lawn” inscribed on their tombstone. One of my neighbors started nagging—I told her I had more important things to worry about: not dying, spending time with my children, keeping my business going and that the lawn ranked about 263 on my list. She got furious. Her husband laughed. Biggest waste of water, chemicals, bad for the environment, etc. I keep it mowed and could care less what growing.
You are talking about yard work. Girl friend lives for it. I struggle to start the lawn mower. And think what I could do with the money that my yard eats up. I could be spending that money buying a new topper
But if you work for Scott's Lawn Care company or build, sell, repair, trade lawnmowers, this is how you feed your family. And then there all of those chemicals , like Roundup.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=how+large+is+lawn+care+a+part+of+the+U.S.+economy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
" Around $45 billion is spent annually to care for the 40 million acres of lawns in the U.S., with 800 million gallons of gasoline burned in dirty lawnmower engines."
That's a lot of money driving the economy. So, we continue to waste resources just so the neighbors can oooh and ahhh at our yards.
Don't even get me started on the flower industry which I think is a colossal waste. But it is big business.
https://smartasset.com/insights/the-economics-of-flowers
Are pinball machines an exorbitant hobby? Not if you are building them for living. And not if you are shipping them for a living. If pinballers went on strike, STI would have to close its doors. Stern would be no more.
Come to think of it, if we got rid of all the junk in our economy, no one would have a job.