Let's look at a key contributing factor - most companies are publicly traded and their shareholders demand increased profits each year. Profits are increased by increasing sales or lowering costs. Raising prices often has the effect of lower sales - so lowering cost is often a focus. How do you lower costs? You either lower the quality or you lower the amount of product you supply for the same price. Or lower both.

Before you get too mad at the shareholders you often have to look in the mirror. Most americans are shareholders somehow_ through pension funds, 401Ks or other investments.

One side effect of all of this is that the quality of many new products is less than the products they are replacing. Glad to hear Stern is actually improving cabinet quality - wish more companies would see that their customers would be willing to pay a bit more for improved quality.

In many (most??) industries, that is where we are today. With some product categories it is difficult or maybe even impossible to find replacement products whose quality rivals a product bought 20 years ago.

Yes "most" is greater than 50% .

Do you have a pension? 13% of Americans are covered by some pension fund - and that pension fund is demanding higher profits from every company stock that fund holds.

Do you have a 401K? ~50% of Americans participate in a 401K plan - and the fund managers of those plans are also demanding higher profits from the company stock they hold.

Just pointing out that most of us regular / average Americans own at least a fraction of a share of a public company.

And then there are the rich 1.4% which hold much of the true wealth in this country, likely not the folks hanging out here with us .

My point is that the world financial system is built in a way that forces continual cost cutting and methods of increasing profit. Public companies don't have a choice - the only way they can increase return for investors is to increase sales (tough if you sell bleach - how do you get more people to buy your brand when it is a commodity), decrease cost (decrease the quality, lay people off to lower your overhead or decrease the amount you deliver for the same price).

Decreasing the amount is a double bonus for companies - it costs companies less to ship (and manufacture) a "gallon" with only 96 ounces of liquid and the consumer will actually buy more of it_ because that "gallon" will be empty sooner.

As a consumer I hate the reduced quality and quantity of products. I try to buy American whenever possible, but that is more challenging each year. And I don't enjoy the fear of being laid off at any time. I also agree that income inequality is an enormous problem in this country - just trying to bring more perspective into the "why" we are where we are...