Device Hoarding Isn't Hurting the Economy - The Economy Is Hurting People
I came across an article on CNBC recently about how Americans are holding onto their devices longer than ever, and how this "device hoarding" is hurting productivity and the economy. The framing frustrated me, because buried in the article's own evidence is a very different story than the one being told.
The Article's Framing
The piece presents consumer behavior as the problem: people are keeping phones and laptops too long, networks have to throttle speeds to accommodate old devices, businesses lose productivity, and the economy suffers.
The implied message: if people would just buy new devices more frequently, everything would be better.
What the Article Actually Documents
But look at the evidence the article itself provides:
- A 69-year-old retiree who says a new phone "would be a luxury" she can't afford
- People holding phones longer because of "widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market"
- Small businesses that "can't afford to constantly upgrade"
- One expert asking, "does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?"
The article documents economic precarity, then frames it as consumer misbehavior.
What the Article Doesn't Examine
Conspicuously absent from the analysis:
Why have device prices skyrocketed? Flagship smartphones have gone from ~$200-400 to $800-1500. The iPhone 17 starts at over $1,000. Wages haven't kept pace.
Why do manufacturers fight repairability? Apple spent years lobbying against right-to-repair legislation. Manufacturers use proprietary parts, software locks, and glued-in batteries specifically to prevent the kind of longevity consumers are now practicing out of necessity.
Why do companies end software support prematurely? A device that works perfectly fine hardware-wise becomes "obsolete" when the manufacturer decides to stop supporting it - often to drive upgrade cycles.
Why have wages stagnated while corporate profits soar? Real wages have barely moved in decades while executive compensation and shareholder returns have exploded. People aren't choosing to be broke - they're being squeezed.
The article briefly quotes experts advocating for modular design and refurbishment infrastructure, but treats these as interesting side notes rather than obvious solutions to the "problem" of devices lasting too long.
The Circular Logic
Here's the logic the article doesn't examine:
- Corporations suppress wages to maximize shareholder returns
- Corporations raise prices to maximize shareholder returns
- Coroprations lay off large portions of the labor force to maximize sharehold returns
- Corporations design products to fail or become obsolete quickly
- Consumers can't afford to replace devices on the expected cycle
- Article: "Consumers keeping devices too long is hurting the economy"
The solution implied? Consumers should spend money they don't have to fix a problem they didn't create.
The Productivity Sleight of Hand
The article cites Federal Reserve research about businesses delaying equipment upgrades and hurting productivity. But it presents this alongside individuals keeping personal phones because they're broke. As if these are equivalent situations.
They're not.
A corporation sitting on billions in cash reserves while refusing to upgrade employee equipment is making a strategic choice to prioritize shareholder returns over worker productivity. They have the money. They're choosing not to spend it.
A retiree in Tucson keeping her six-year-old Samsung because she "cannot afford a new one" is not making the same kind of choice. She doesn't have the money. There's no choice to make.
Conflating these situations obscures who's actually responsible for the productivity problem.
"Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make It Do, or Do Without"
That phrase comes from the Great Depression. It was survival wisdom for people living through economic catastrophe.
We're hearing it again because, for a growing portion of the population, those conditions are returning. People aren't "hoarding" devices as some kind of lifestyle choice or environmental statement. They're making things last because they have to.
Ironic that it only took us about 100 years to get back here.
The signs are everywhere: credit card debt at record highs, savings rates plummeting, "buy now pay later" schemes proliferating because people can't afford purchases outright, multiple generations living under one roof out of necessity rather than choice.
But instead of examining why people are in survival mode, articles like this frame their survival behaviors as economically irresponsible. As if consumers exist to serve the economy rather than the economy existing to serve people.
The Political Bait and Switch
It's worth noting that the current president ran for his second term on a platform that included lowering costs for Americans. "Day one," we were told. Relief was coming.
What's actually happened? Essential programs gutted. Corporate pocketbooks lined. The squeeze on the middle class tightened further.
And then there are the tariffs.
If the phrase "100 years to get back here" feels pointed, it should. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods. The intention was to protect American jobs and manufacturing. Over a thousand economists signed a petition urging Hoover to veto the bill. He signed it anyway.
The result? Trading partners retaliated with their own tariffs. Global trade collapsed by 66%. Unemployment, already at 8% when the act passed, jumped to 16% the following year and 25% the year after that. Economists and historians widely regard it as one of the most catastrophic policy decisions of the era. A textbook example of how protectionism can deepen an economic crisis rather than solve one.
Nearly a century later, we're watching the same playbook. The current administration has implemented sweeping tariffs while insisting that "trade wars are good and easy to win." Trading partners are retaliating. Prices are rising. The people who were promised relief are getting squeezed harder. Coroprations don't pay tariffs, consumers do.
It took us almost exactly 100 years to forget the lesson of Smoot-Hawley. Or perhaps we didn't forget.
I try to operate from the principle of not ascribing to malice what can be explained by ignorance. But at a certain point, that generosity strains credulity. When the historical precedent is this clear, when economists warned against it then and are warning against it now, when the people making these decisions have access to the best information and advisors in the world, "ignorance" stops being a sufficient explanation.
Which leaves a darker possibility: perhaps the people in power know exactly what these policies will do. Perhaps economic instability serves certain interests. Desperate workers accept lower wages. Struggling small businesses sell to larger competitors. Assets become cheaper for those with cash reserves to scoop up. Crisis justifies consolidating power.
I don't know if that's true. But I know that "they didn't realize this would happen" becomes harder to believe when you're repeating a mistake that's literally taught in high school economics classes and also comes complete with a memorable scene in a 1980s movie mocking how obviously disastrous it was.
At some point, the question shifts from "how could they not know?" to "who benefits from the chaos?"
The people keeping their six-year-old phones aren't doing it because they love old technology. They're doing it because the promised relief never came, and the policies being enacted are making things worse, not better.
When you promise to lower costs and then enact policies that benefit corporations at the expense of working people, you don't get to wonder why consumers aren't consuming. You created the conditions. You made the choice.
And yet, the framing persists: the problem is consumer behavior, not policy choices. The problem is people not spending, not an economy designed to extract wealth upward while leaving everyone else scrambling and fighting over the scraps.
This is the bait and switch in action: promise populist relief, deliver corporate welfare, repeat the mistakes of history, blame the people for the predictable results.
The One Honest Voice
Buried in the article, Cassandra Cummings says:
"It may help the economy to spend more and force upgrades, but does it really help people who are already struggling to pay bills?"
That question should have been the center of the article. Instead, it's a throwaway line.
The Real Story
The real story isn't "device hoarding hurts economy."
The real story is: decades of wage stagnation, corporate consolidation, shareholder-first capitalism, and deliberate planned obsolescence have created an economy where regular people can't afford to participate in the consumption patterns that economy depends on.
The snake is eating its own tail.
You can't suppress wages, raise prices, fight repairability, and design products to fail - then blame consumers when they can't afford to buy new products every two years.
You can't hollow out the middle class and then wonder why they're not spending.
What Would Actually Help
The article gestures toward solutions but doesn't commit to them:
- Right to repair legislation - Force manufacturers to make devices repairable and provide parts and documentation
- Extended software support requirements - If hardware works, software should support it
- Modular, upgradeable design - Let people replace components instead of entire devices
- Refurbishment infrastructure - Treat device longevity as a feature, not a bug
- Living wages - Pay people enough that buying a new phone isn't a financial crisis
- Decommoditized housing - Don't allow large coroprations and investor groups to buy large swaths of housing that they are not using for corporte interests
But these solutions would cut into corporate profits. They'd require treating consumers as people rather than revenue streams. They'd mean prioritizing sustainability and accessibility over quarterly earnings.
So instead, we get articles framing consumer poverty as consumer misbehavior.
"Why Are You Making Me Hurt You?"
There's something else going on here that deserves attention: the media's role in reinforcing this framing.
CNBC isn't a scrappy independent outlet. It's a major financial news network whose audience includes investors, executives, and policymakers. When they publish an article framing consumer poverty as consumer misbehavior, they're not speaking truth to power. They're speaking for power.
The framing "device hoarding hurts the economy" is structurally identical to an abuser asking, "Why are you making me hurt you?"
- The abuser creates the conditions of harm
- The victim responds with survival behaviors
- The abuser frames the victim's survival behaviors as the cause of the problem
- The victim is told they're responsible for fixing the situation by changing their behavior
Corporations suppress wages, raise prices, design products to fail, fight repairability, and end software support prematurely. Consumers respond by making devices last longer. Media frames consumer behavior as the problem.
The implied solution is never "corporations should pay living wages" or "manufacturers should build repairable products" or "maybe shareholder returns shouldn't be the sole organizing principle of the economy."
The implied solution is always: consumers should consume more. Workers should work harder. People should stop being so irresponsible with their survival strategies.
This is what it looks like when media serves corporate interests instead of public interests. The framing protects the powerful by making their victims responsible for the harm being done to them.
Financial media could be asking: Why have wages stagnated for decades? Why do corporations prioritize buybacks over worker investment? Why is housing unaffordable? Why is healthcare bankrupting families? Why are people drowning in debt?
Instead, they ask: Why aren't broke people buying more stuff?
That's not journalism. That's propaganda wearing journalism's clothes.
The Bottom Line
When a 69-year-old retiree is described as part of an economic problem because she can't afford a new phone, the framing is backwards.
She's not the problem. She's the symptom.
The problem is an economy that extracts maximum value from workers, charges maximum prices from consumers, designs products to fail, fights efforts to extend product life, and then blames people when they can't keep up with the expected consumption pace.
"Device hoarding" isn't hurting the economy. The economy already hurt the people, and now they're just trying to survive.