Actually, from my personal experience, the biggest decline in durabilty for many types of appliances happened during the 1980s, and may have started in the late 70s.
Btw, half of the problem was that repairs really started to require more specialized knowledge and equipment around that time, due to a sharp rise in the use of electronic components to control anything from a hair dryer to a car. To some extent this was the cost of progress, but it's pretty clear that manufacturers saw the benefit in either preventing repairs to force customers to buy new or to profit from "authorized" repairs in various ways.
And as both salaries and income taxes went up quickly in the 80s where I lived, qualified technicians went up in price much more quickly than the machines they repaired.
There was perhaps one thing pulling in the opposite direction during that decade, though, and that was the high interest rates. If you had to borrow money to get something new, repairing the old one (whether it was a TV or a car) still made sense
Btw, half of the problem was that repairs really started to require more specialized knowledge and equipment around that time, due to a sharp rise in the use of electronic components to control anything from a hair dryer to a car. To some extent this was the cost of progress, but it's pretty clear that manufacturers saw the benefit in either preventing repairs to force customers to buy new or to profit from "authorized" repairs in various ways.
And as both salaries and income taxes went up quickly in the 80s where I lived, qualified technicians went up in price much more quickly than the machines they repaired.
There was perhaps one thing pulling in the opposite direction during that decade, though, and that was the high interest rates. If you had to borrow money to get something new, repairing the old one (whether it was a TV or a car) still made sense