Haven't read all 160 replies yet, but didn't Atlantic Monthly already do this exact same story?

You have wonderful headline writers; the headline here does provoke you to read the article – which then fails to deliver. This article is simply beneath Salon's standards of quality reporting. For instance, it gives next to nothing to back the premise that IKEA furniture is quickly tossed out.

In our home, we still have some nice IKEA bookcases that I bought in university. Our now university-age kids have inherited IKEA bedframes and lamps - which still look good.

For a lot of people, IKEA supplies affordable, stylish furniture. Where's the merit in trashing that?

There's only one way people will use less -- the prices have to go up.

It's possible to do that through long term hard work & political maneuvering in organizations like the WTO, etc., that would mandate labour standards, environmental standards, etc. among trading nations.

The easy way would be to force people to use less, which really would be difficult without centralizing the economy - not exactly a pleasant thought.

Mountain, meet molehill.

My IKEA stuff is good quality, not like any toaster I have bought in the last 20 years.

As life progressed from starving student to, um, shall we say, "comfortable", I have frequently bought IKEA furniture. I still have most of it. Whatever is not still in my house has been given to others or gone to my kids for their starter homes.

This is a lazy piece, especially about IKEA. Rather than doing the research that actually demonstrates that IKEA has been found to use illegally harvested wood, the writer merely states that they don't have enough wood inspectors.

Well, that actually depends on IKEA's inspection system. Given their very high volume, they will probably have a system of supply from a relatively small number of established wood products suppliers with large and reliable stands of forests to harvest. It is also likely there is a protocol in place for sourcing that is verifiable by inspectors and which imposes penalties for noncompliance. Typically pirated forestry products are marketed to smaller industrial operations rather than high volume users.

Real journalism would involve learning about this system and showing how it doesn't work, not just saying that 11 inspectors isn't enough.

My family and I have been saying the same things for years:

- America's store shelves are now lined with cheap crap;

- Nothing lasts anymore;

- Nobody knows their job, because they aren't paid well enough or given job security long enough to give a shit (why should they?).

So you go to the hardware store and nobody knows how to help you with a hardware question. You call your bank and get three different answers in three different days to the same question. An airline will only refund your damaged goods if you post a Youtube song about it.

What has given meaning to people's lives for most of human history? Their family and their work. The "fruits of their labors." So all you enlightened Liberals laugh and mock at those who lament the loss of American pride in their craftsmanship, making American products for American people - yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Remember the end of the family farmer in the 80's, or was that just a big joke to you, because they were a bunch of "rednecks," so who gives a shit?

We no longer expect craftsmanship in everyday objects; maybe we don't feel we even deserve it;

This clause can be read in two ways: I read it as we no longer expect it because we woke up the the reality it is gone. And as for "deserve?" Well, given the guests I see on Dr. Phil and Oprah, who think they desrve to be talked down to and treated like children, maybe you are right. But I have not been beaten into submission yet by the system, so I still think I deserve craftsmanship (or just plain quality) when I spend my hard earned money on products. Everybody desires crafstmanship, and quality, but now only the rich can afford it.

I have not read all the Letters here, but has anybody tied this to global warming? The waste, the energy consumption, of mass producing all of these cheap products, which need to be replaced within a matter of years, if not months, then the garbage dumps around the world, being filled with cheap crap that either breaks down, or gets replaced as soon as someone can afford the next level of cheap crap? What impact does this have on our environment?

You see, it all ties together. It is the Humanist Secular Liberal Agenda, which is removing God from our lives. You laugh, because you are a fool. We have no reverence for nature anymore, we have no reverance for labor, we have no reverance for family, and we have no reverence for life. It is all about money and physical desire. You have removed the human spirit from our society, and now we are walking the aisles of Wal-Mart, tripping out on anti-depressents, with screaming, fatherless children in tow, looking forward to a beer and NBC Must-See-TV as the highlight of our spiritually empty days. Nothing has meaning anymore, it is all about money and desires to be fulfilled. You have removed the human spirit, and this is the world that manifests when you do that.

It sounds to me like the vast majority of the people who posted have absolutely no understanding of design. A great many Ikea products have *fantastic* design, and the fact that nobody posting recognizes that is pretty sad.

The Tullsta armchair, for instance, is a great art deco style piece. It is almost impossible to find a chair in that style, unless you want to pay $2 - 3K for a vintage original, assuming you can locate one. It's also extremely comfortable!

And the Besta cabinets -- the design brilliance that it takes to manufacture cabinets with completely flat doors that match up to each other perfectly, so that on a wall, the only thing you see is the seams, which themselves become part of the design -- it's fantastic. I envisioned cabinets with that type of door *years* ago, and searched, and begged several bookcase manufacturers to make them for me, to no avail. I had almost given up, when I happened across the Ikea website. Mine thrill me every single day.

Further, a lot of their furniture is configurable into an art deco style. Nobody talks about the fact that there is almost no way, unless you live in Miami or LA, to obtain art deco style furniture used! I searched for months for a bar cabinet, and had to have it shipped from ENGLAND because I couldn't get one here!

Bottom line - Ikea has a lot of truly excellent design. Maybe that's only apparent if you actually *study* design? I don't know. I just know it's not like everything else in every furniture store around me, and for that I'm grateful.