"Creative waste" was embraced before World War II, which was the idea that it was better for the economy for consumers to throw things away and buy new ones. Roy Sheldon and Egmont Arens coined the term in their 1932 book, adding that consumerism was something unique to America.
During the 1930s, many American families were forced to save up their earnings in order to afford modern luxuries like a refrigerator or vehicle. In the early 1940s, middle-class families saw an increase in wages, and could afford the things they needed, as well as many of the things they desired. Ready for the demand, Sears Roebuck began introducing a new refrigerator model each year in the 1930s. The refrigerators from year to year essentially all had the same hardware, but consumers wanted stylistic changes, so the market shifted to meet the demand.
This idea of releasing a new refrigerator model every year that Roebuck introduced, encouraged consumers to purchase products more often. Rather than waiting for products to become so old that consumers replaced them out of necessity, by the 1950s, middle-class families were upgrading their products in order to display social status.
By the end of the 1950s, Vance Packard had introduced three popular books which described marketers as tricksters that manipulated consumers into purchasing substandard, irrelevant merchandise.
As the baby boomer generation began to grow into adulthood, some rejected the wasteful nature of planned obsolescence. However, overall, the general consensus was that planned obsolescence was here to stay, and it continued to fuel the American economy, as it still does today.
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