Or have lower class families been buying plastic to increase the appearance of their quality of life for 6+ generations?
I get that we're going through mega-inflation since covid. Even before that, if you bought whole foods and clothes that aren't plastic (nylon), the ol' paycheck only stretched so far.
I'd really like to pick the brain of a self-aware Boomer and find out how long it's been like this.
None of the things you described are exclusive to middle-class people. Some of the worst wastefulness I've seen has actually been from lower-class people.
Lower-class people can't conceptualize the future (incapable of abstraction), buy everything on credit (it's "free money"), and only care if the monthly payments don't go over their meager wages (can only do basic addition/subtraction, nevermind complex shit like percentages or compounding).
The current stagflation and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis were created from giving poorfags money they didn't deserve.
It's so painful seeing the way people use food stamps. They'll buy ice cream, candy, cigarettes, booze, and lottery tickets all in one go, and they'll tell the cashier, "Put the food on this card, and the rest on my credit card".
That's not just wastefulness. What I describe is the middle-class mentality that is based around the fact that they have a significant enough money to not have to worry about "waste". That's a key aspect.
Seems to me like lower-class people actually do less worrying than middle-class when it comes to waste. The idea that lower-class people are these virtuous and frugal paragons in contrast to the middle-class just seems a bit romantic. I've lived among them myself and was disillusioned through experience.