In it I learned FDR envisioned housing as a driver of economic growth. Home ownership, and by extension furnishing, were to be realized by the masses. (If people think Americans move around a lot now, well that was true during frontier days as well. Immigrants had to go to wherever there was work and mobility necessitated a minimum of possessions.)

I'm entirely sympathetic to the prohibitive costs of moving furniture. However, it does give me satisfaction that a small table-shelf which a Great Aunt gave me in 1987 has moved with me across the country and part-way back. Bought from L.L. Bean, it will last forever.

It's a sad fact of life. Not many people in this country care about quality anymore. They are more interested in how cheap it is. If they have to buy another one in 3 months because the cheap one they just bought is broken big deal! Which can be demonstrated by the parking lot outside of Wal-Mart any day of week and the idiots who waste their time shopping there. And the many quality businesses that have gone out of business because of the cheapness of American's and appeal of a bargain that isn't really a bargain. Most aren't bright enough to figure out they are getting screwed behind those golden doors of Wal Mart. I am not familiar enough with IKEA to even comment. There isn't a store in my area.

With the combination of the current economic collapse, the proposed hobbling of the industrial economic engine to control a miniscule amount of harmless CO2, and the noble fight to keep prices high, the world can rest happy knowing that poor people living in terrible conditions can look forward to a day in a future world where they wont have to experience the horrible humiliation of hearing a hollow core door closing with that terrible tacky hollow clicky sound. Hurray for us!

Let's keep stuff really expensive so shopkeepers can make a bundle instead of purchasers saving a few pennies. That will also help humanity a lot.

I agree with almost all of Ms Zacharek's critique. However, while she puts heaps of blame on IKEA for its promotion of starter products, she fails to note a much larger consumer culture that has satiated itself for almost a century on planned obsolescence, a technique mastered by the now defunct American auto industry. Thus the middle-class of which she speaks was also formed on a well stoked consumer appetite (by the companies and those creative Mad Men) for buying goods again and again and again. As a architectural historian friend graphically described our current state - no wonder our houses are so "bloated." Many of us live in twice the square footage that our parents did and we crave even more. We live or rather lived, given the credit debacle, in a trade-up to the next better and bigger thing culture - whether it be the IKEA dresser, the house, or in some cases, the spouse.

I for one am a loyal IKEA shopper--I'm also an architect who knows how to look under-the-hood so to speak, of furniture and household goods. I've spec-ed their kitchen cabinet line for several clients. I find many of there products to be quite good and sturdy enough to last many years-if people chose to keep them and took care in their daily use. For example, my six fold up IKEA chairs and everyday much used silverware (even for guests) are almost twenty years old. Not planning on replacing them anytime soon. Next to my vintage Eames sofa and Arts and Crafts rockers are 4 white metal cabinets - 10 years old from IKEA. And these recently made the trek from the west coast to NYC and easily adapted from 1600sqft to 800 sqft, because I looked for an affordable apartment that could fit what I owned and not what I wanted to buy. I use IKEA throughout my home, along with things from high-end and mid-range companies, consignment shops and yard sales. I'm simply an thoughtful consumer who always buys things that aren't super trendy, has clean lines, but most importantly built to last.

In other words I buy to keep and take care of what I have. If Americans were a little less apt to trash and discard, we'd have less heaps of particle board and plastic laminates clogging our dumps. A big part of the problem is that we have become a culture of uber consumers who have trashed the lessons of buying wisely and reusing what we have on hand that our depression aged parents and grandparents passed onto us. I always admired the mens store commercial whose tagline is "an educated consumer is our best customer," perhaps we just need a little more schooling.

So, let me see if I have this straight.

Buying cheap, foreign-made items from the big box store is the province of "rill 'Mericans," while only fluffy-headed, shiftless liberal elites purchase furniture made in the U.S. by American workers? (And apparently we pay quite dearly for these items, despite the fact that we live off welfare checks from hard-working conservatives. How do we pull that off?)

Good to know - the rules change so often these days.

So what I have is nice high quality. I'm not the type to go out and buy a bedroom set. I have an idea what I want a room to be like and when I discover something interesting I get it. My rooms evolve.

Walmart. I never shop there, but I've been there a few times with a friend who thinks they're wonderful. She walks up and down the aisles like a zombie filling her cart with junk. I wonder what she does with it or why she even wants it. It seems more a matter of buying cheap things.

Sadly, that the Walmarts of the world are demanding goods from vendors at a certain price so they can turn the around cheap is the reason much of the electronics we buy are junk. The materials, etc. have been downgraded to meet the demands of Walmart.