Thursday, January 28, 2016

How Wealthy of a Society is America? Our Toilet Paper Provides a Clue

Don Boudreaux explains:
I just returned from a post-blizzard run to the supermarket.  While there I noticed that Charmin and many other brands of toilet paper feature embossed designs on their products....

Think of this astonishing fact: someone had the idea to beautify with such designs a product that literally gets flushed down the toilet; other people spent time coming up with these designs; yet other people engineered machines to have the capacity to emboss such designs onto toilet paper; and all of this was done because market forces drive toilet-paper manufactures to compete for consumer patronage.

We are such a wealthy society that, to please ordinary consumers, we spend resources beautifying toilet paper.

3 comments:

  1. Can you find toilet paper with the face of politicians?

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  2. My fave is the $100 bill toilet paper

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  3. Actually I don't think it has anything to do with wealth and beauty. Paper companies wanted to increase production and make their machines go faster. So they began making toilet paper that was not as soft nor as elastic. The embossing is done to create a sense of softness. It also creates bulk, meaning less paper wound around the cardboard.

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