I found a price of $975 for a 23" 1969 RCA TV. The equivalent price today would be $6,184.02. Walmart sells a 24" TV for less than $150. Even if the average Walmart TV lasted only 2 years, you would have 40 years of TV for $3,000, which is half as much. I think most Walmart TVs last longer than 2 years, though (I know plenty of people who bought their TVs at Walmart since they usually have the best price--my old roommate bought his 4 years ago), which makes for an even better case. Your 1969 TV has lasted for 40 years because someone paid a fortune for it--of course the quality was better. But the price of the TV now is so low that it would make more economic sense to buy cheap TVs and replace them when they break then it would to spent lots of money on a very expensive TV.
By suggesting that quality problems overcome lower prices, you're basically saying that the consumers who have spent trillions of dollars at Walmart over the years are just morons incapable of making rational economic calculations. The TV example exposes this is a farce. The reason people began shopping at Walmart, continued shopping at Walmart, and still continue to shiop at Walmart is because, in aggregate, it delivers the best value to them--saving them tens of billions of dollars a year over what costs otherwise would have been. Your complaint about consumer culture, which no longer values service, quality, loyalty, or anything like that--favoring cheap, disposable, and easily replaced stuff instead--doesn't alter the economic reality. In some cases, choosing quality may make more economic sense than choosing cheap. But not in aggregate.
