The Matt Walsh Show - September 03, 2026


Ep. 1834 - I Looked Into Why Household Appliance Quality Is Declining. It's Not What You Think.


Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

174.72

Word count

7,032

Sentence count

410


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:57.240 Well, it's almost Labor Day, which means you're about to be carpet bombed, if you're not already, with advertisements for new appliances, almost all of which are essentially ticking time bombs waiting to self-immolate in your home when you least expect it.
00:01:11.400 And for that reason, the holiday presents, I think, a good opportunity to answer some questions that almost every American has asked in the past decade or so, which are, when exactly did household appliances become so much worse, so much more dysfunctional and unreliable and even dangerous?
00:01:28.520 And what specifically changed in the appliances themselves?
00:01:32.220 Is there any concrete answer to these questions?
00:01:35.320 Are we all imagining the massive decline in quality?
00:01:39.140 Well, as it turns out, no, it is not a figment of our imagination.
00:01:43.220 Yes, the quality of our appliances, like so many other products in our lives, is declining.
00:01:47.260 And there are very concrete reasons for that.
00:01:49.600 And it's not as simple as, you know, corporations want to make more money, so they design their
00:01:55.100 products around planned obsolescence.
00:01:58.580 That's part of it, but it's not the full story.
00:02:00.640 There's also the fact that government regulations and the threat of litigation are forcing some
00:02:05.100 of the largest appliance manufacturers
00:02:06.700 to build major vulnerabilities into their products.
00:02:10.720 And the manufacturers, rather than tell consumers
00:02:13.180 what's happening and how to fix the issues,
00:02:15.120 are happy to sit back and watch as the appliances break,
00:02:18.540 leading to new sales.
00:02:19.540 It's an intricate scam.
00:02:21.200 And we're gonna reveal it all
00:02:22.920 so that you know what to look for.
00:02:25.400 But first, let's just watch this video together
00:02:28.280 to set the stage.
00:02:29.120 This is from an account called Tech Stuff,
00:02:30.980 and it describes a Sunbeam branded toaster
00:02:34.700 from the 1940s. So if my math is right, which it often isn't, we're talking about a toaster from
00:02:40.140 more than 80 years ago. Now, you would think, given all the advances in technology that have
00:02:44.500 taken place since the 1940s, that today's toasters would be vastly superior to this product from
00:02:50.280 Sunbeam. Again, it was created long before we landed on the moon. And yet, despite all the time
00:02:55.560 that's passed, modern toasters have nothing on the Sunbeam. And there's a very, very interesting
00:03:02.040 reason for that that we'll talk about. Watch. What makes this toaster cool is, well besides
00:03:09.480 the bread automatically rising and lowering when it's starting or finishing, it's actually the
00:03:16.040 radiant control portion that makes it cool. And here, just let me read it for you. The toasting
00:03:21.640 is always the same no matter what kind of bread you use. The heat radiated from the surface of
00:03:26.360 the bread actuates the exclusive radiant control thermostat. That's why you always get the same
00:03:31.400 uniform golden toast you want, whether the slices are moist or dry, cold or
00:03:35.540 warm, thick or thin. Only the Sunbeam has it. And you can clearly see they're
00:03:40.520 pointing to the radiant control, which is essentially a bi-metallic strip that,
00:03:44.660 when it gets hot enough, it actuates the thermostat, it clicks it off, and then
00:03:50.220 the bread rises up. And that's all done mechanically. There's no motors in there
00:03:54.400 that makes it go up and down. It's just a counterbalance on a lever. So I'm gonna
00:03:59.200 be making a lot of toast right now and I'm gonna be using white bread and
00:04:03.280 English muffin, hamburger bun, some rye bread. Well here you'll be able to see
00:04:07.380 that all of the bread here is toasted at about the same doneness. And that's the
00:04:14.380 really cool part about this toaster. And let me put all these times up against
00:04:18.320 each other and as you can see the times vary rather wildly. It goes from a
00:04:25.840 a almost two minutes at english muffin at a minute 55 and the hamburger bun at 42 seconds
00:04:32.720 and i didn't change any settings it has the radiant control sensor and it keeps them all about the
00:04:38.720 same level of doneness automatically so by comparison my cuisinart toaster which is rated
00:04:45.360 at 1800 watts you can see about how bright this gets with its heating elements now side by side
00:04:51.840 you can clearly see the sunbeam is really hot, and that's only at 1375 watts. Still, it is a
00:05:00.960 hotter toast, in my opinion, when it comes out, and I just think it's better. So in the 1940s,
00:05:07.020 the toaster could sense how hot the bread was, and it would dynamically adjust the heating time to
00:05:12.620 ensure the bread was toasted appropriately. So if you cooked one batch of toast and then quickly
00:05:17.160 toasted another while the toaster was still hot, you didn't have to worry about timer settings or
00:05:20.700 anything like that, the Sunbeam would automatically cook the second batch of toast for a shorter
00:05:24.620 period of time. And as you saw, no matter what you stick in the Sunbeam, it's going to heat it
00:05:29.160 to a consistent level. Now, by contrast, today's toasters mostly use timers, which are obviously
00:05:33.720 much more inexact because they're not measuring heat at all. And even some premium toasters that
00:05:38.340 do measure temperature aren't as good as the Sunbeam because they measure ambient temperature
00:05:42.520 in the toaster as opposed to the temperature in the bread itself. This is the kind of thing that
00:05:46.880 if you're a conspiratorial person, must absolutely drive you crazy. I mean, how could it be that
00:05:52.080 over the course of 80 years, we haven't figured out how to make a better toaster? How could it
00:05:57.760 be that, if anything, most toasters have degraded in quality? Our grandparents and great-grandparents
00:06:03.140 all those years ago, they imagined a Jetsonian future where a robot would like instantly zap
00:06:09.460 your bread to the exact level of toastiness that you desire. And instead, here we are,
00:06:13.800 eight decades later with toasters that have not advanced at all, or have gone the opposite
00:06:17.980 direction? Is it possible there's somehow a conspiracy to make toasters worse? Actually,
00:06:23.900 that would be the optimistic explanation. The more likely explanation is that we've all simply
00:06:28.440 accepted a mediocre product, which is cheaper to produce, so that's what we get. It's similar to
00:06:34.960 how we abandoned the Concorde, the supersonic passenger jet. We had the ability to fly on
00:06:40.380 faster planes and have better toasters and have a lot of other better stuff. But we decided
00:06:46.540 collectively as a population that it just wasn't worth it. So while we can land on the moon,
00:06:52.360 we're stuck with toasters that don't work very well. That's the weird dynamic.
00:06:56.600 Now you can get very radicalized if you spend any amount of time thinking about this topic.
00:07:00.680 And indeed, many people are doing just that. So consider this viral video that blew up recently
00:07:05.220 where a guy shows off his fully functioning 1956 washer in 2026.
00:07:12.060 Now, today, the typical washing machine lasts for about 7 to 10 years.
00:07:16.320 This machine is going on 70 years of use and still going strong.
00:07:21.420 Watch.
00:07:22.320 This is a 1956 Frigidaire washer.
00:07:25.900 I want to show you guys how quickly it'll empty this tub
00:07:29.620 and get up to 1,100 RPMs of spin speed.
00:07:32.940 Watch this.
00:07:35.220 and it's there now in response to videos like this you might point out that well you know while
00:07:59.520 it's impressive we can't actually draw too many conclusions from this clip alone we have no idea
00:08:04.040 how many times this washing machine has been repaired, for example. Nor do we know on average
00:08:09.220 the typical lifespan of a Frigidaire washing machine from the 1950s, nor does anyone have
00:08:13.520 any data on that point. Maybe 90% of them died within a few years, and this one is a unicorn,
00:08:18.420 so it's a kind of a survivorship bias going on. But the thing is, pretty much everyone has a
00:08:23.220 story like this. I mean, anecdotally, you probably remember, or your parents may remember,
00:08:27.420 how much longer appliances used to last and how they were often built with steel instead of plastic
00:08:32.400 or aluminum. And even if you don't remember that, it's hard to miss the constant stream
00:08:36.980 of videos where people make this claim. So here's another one that went viral. This is
00:08:41.320 a fridge from 1958. Watch.
00:08:45.420 All right, on today's episode of They Don't Build Things Like They Used To, I present
00:08:49.920 the refrigerator from 1958. This is the General Electric variety with the Lazy Susans that
00:08:59.640 are also adjustable up and down. Some people ask, well, what do you do if you
00:09:04.060 have to put something tall in there? Well, you push the button in and then you
00:09:07.340 lower the shelf down as needed. It says, rotating crisper drawer as well.
00:09:17.120 Temperature control, butter storage. That was a big thing back in the day.
00:09:20.780 I know most of us just leave our butter out on their countertop, but back when
00:09:24.260 butter was still real, they had a separate heated compartment inside the
00:09:27.740 fridge for it. Steel plate. Well, I'll go find some more. Okay. Okay. So here we are. We got,
00:09:40.280 I don't know, quite a few pounds of steel on there.
00:09:45.720 Now, does that shelf look like it's even thinking about breaking or bending or doing whatever it is
00:09:51.820 that someone says it's going to do? Now, in the interest of full disclosure, since I'm always
00:09:56.860 interested in presenting the other side of the debate, you should know that this viral fridge
00:10:01.760 video really infuriated the esteemed journalists at the Wall Street Journal. And they put out a
00:10:06.580 TikTok video in the usual style that these kind of videos are made now. And this is made by someone
00:10:13.680 named Emma Camp debunking the fridge from 1958. Watch. I recently saw a viral video about a fridge
00:10:22.240 from 1958 and the comments drove me crazy. Everyone seemed to agree that the reason why they didn't
00:10:28.600 have a fridge as cool as that one is because of capitalism. This could not be more wrong. So while
00:10:34.220 I couldn't find that exact model, I did track down an ad for a similar fridge from 1958. It costs $400
00:10:41.360 so about $4,600 today. Most modern fridges are way less expensive than that. In fact $4,600 these
00:10:48.780 days will get you just about the nicest fridge that money can buy. This smart
00:10:52.440 fridge is 50% larger than the 1958 one. It has a built-in ice maker and water
00:10:57.300 dispenser and some very fancy beverage storage. Not only are fridges cheaper
00:11:02.220 today, but modern American families are much richer than they were in the 1950s.
00:11:06.460 In fact, in 1950, around 20% of American homes didn't even have fridges. Why did
00:11:11.880 appliances become less expensive? It comes down to technological innovation
00:11:15.540 and competition from foreign models.
00:11:17.140 So no, capitalism is not the reason
00:11:19.800 why you don't have that vintage fridge.
00:11:22.040 It's why you, normal person watching this video,
00:11:25.680 can afford a fridge in the first place.
00:11:27.900 Now, I counted about five different poses
00:11:30.220 in that one-minute video,
00:11:31.820 which is actually restrained
00:11:33.300 by Gen Z selfie video standards.
00:11:35.340 That could have fit in another 20 poses or so,
00:11:37.280 20 more cuts.
00:11:38.660 And by the way, this video is courtesy
00:11:40.060 of the Wall Street Journal opinion section,
00:11:41.940 which is the same paper and the same opinion section
00:11:44.040 that just a few days ago defended a columnist who used AI to write an op-ed on the theory that AI
00:11:51.240 is just another tool, you know, like a spell checker or a thesaurus. Emma Camp had nothing
00:11:55.700 to do with that, to be clear, but I can't miss the opportunity to mention it since we're talking
00:11:58.760 about Wall Street Journal. And the writer in this case, in the case of the op-ed, did not use AI
00:12:04.240 just to help him. He used it to draft entire paragraphs, to generate the article, in large
00:12:09.620 sections anyway. And the AI-generated writing was so bad that everyone immediately called it out.
00:12:16.660 And nevertheless, in the eyes of the Wall Street Journal, there was nothing wrong with the AI-generated
00:12:21.340 slop op-ed or slop-ed that we can, as we can now probably dub it. And anyway, as for the substance
00:12:28.260 of what Emma Camp actually says, first of all, she never says anything about the butter warmer in the
00:12:32.680 fridge from the 1950s. She talks a lot about the new features in modern fridges, but she fails to
00:12:36.440 mention that none of these features is anywhere near as cool as a butter warmer in your fridge.
00:12:41.240 That's a big omission right off the bat. But then, you know, there's the whole bit about
00:12:45.020 capitalism, as if everyone who's upset with their appliances must be a communist.
00:12:49.460 And in fairness, some people do blame capitalism for this problem. And I'm sure she saw plenty of
00:12:54.300 comments to that effect, which she's responding to. But to make this entire discussion into a
00:12:58.560 capitalism versus anti-capitalism thing misses the point. I'm not anti-capitalism, obviously.
00:13:04.300 I don't think we should return the Bolsheviks to power simply because appliances are terrible now.
00:13:10.380 And yes, as she states in the video, it's obviously true that appliances are much cheaper now than they were in the 1950s.
00:13:16.120 They have more features, too, with the exception of the butter warmer.
00:13:20.300 And many of these new features are totally pointless while also making the appliance much more likely to break down.
00:13:26.440 But none of this explains why appliances today, as a general matter, are not built to last for any significant amount of time.
00:13:34.300 She doesn't address that question. And that's strange because just a couple of years ago,
00:13:39.720 this same paper, the Wall Street Journal, observed that according to all available data,
00:13:44.460 the problem is indeed very real. Quote, appliance technicians and others in the industry say there
00:13:49.740 has been an increase in items in need of repair. Yelp users, for example, requested 58% more quotes
00:13:55.960 from thousands of appliance repair businesses last month than they did in January of 2022.
00:14:01.260 American households spent 43% more on home appliances in 23 than they did in 2013,
00:14:07.120 rising from an inflation-adjusted average of $390 to $558. Prices for the category declined 12%
00:14:15.620 from the beginning of 2013 through the end of 2023, according to the Labor Department.
00:14:20.700 Okay, so I'll say that again. We now spend 43% more on home appliances than we did in 2013,
00:14:27.540 even though prices have decreased in that same period the only logical explanation is that people
00:14:35.340 are replacing appliances much more frequently than they used to probably because those appliances
00:14:40.600 are breaking and indeed the article goes through several examples of people who spend you know
00:14:45.320 spend a lot of money for new appliances only to see them fail in spectacular fashion there's one
00:14:50.680 case where a couple owned a dishwasher from the 90s it was working perfectly but they decided to
00:14:55.560 purchase a much sleeker $800 stainless steel dishwasher from GE. Only for the new Dutch
00:15:01.640 dishwasher to spring a hidden leak less than three years later, they ended up with $35,000
00:15:07.080 worth of damage to their kitchen. Plus they got dropped by their homeowner's insurance.
00:15:11.660 And the culprit was a $60 pump that broke. Yes, a $60 pump ultimately caused $35,000 in damages.
00:15:21.220 And again, anecdotally, I can say that my personal experience with dishwashers in particular
00:15:25.300 has been similarly tragic.
00:15:28.460 We've had at least two top-of-the-line dishwashers
00:15:31.160 in the last couple of years
00:15:32.060 that have ended up leaking all over the floor.
00:15:34.080 Both had to be replaced.
00:15:36.300 And one thing you notice about the really nice dishwashers
00:15:38.980 is that even if they remain functional
00:15:41.200 for longer than three and a half days,
00:15:43.140 they don't actually do a better job
00:15:45.340 of the thing that they're supposed to do,
00:15:46.920 which is washing the dishes.
00:15:48.840 The expensive ones don't produce noticeably cleaner dishes.
00:15:52.820 Sometimes it runs the opposite way.
00:15:54.260 this is not an uncommon situation anymore across a variety of appliances, which we'll talk about
00:15:59.160 in a second. But maybe the best way to illustrate how much things have changed is simply to look at
00:16:04.860 how appliances are advertised now compared to the 70s and earlier. So here are a couple of Maytag
00:16:11.640 ads from all the way back then, in case you don't remember them or weren't alive when they were
00:16:17.720 airing. Watch.
00:16:19.960 Mr. Maytag
00:16:21.580 Repairman. I'm coming.
00:16:24.140 Help.
00:16:25.440 Oh, lonely.
00:16:28.020 Hold on.
00:16:29.060 Help.
00:16:31.680 I'd go anywhere to fix a Maytag.
00:16:37.040 What a
00:16:37.840 dream. But I'm exhausted.
00:16:40.280 I'd better go down to the shop
00:16:41.600 and get some rest.
00:16:43.920 Not all Maytag Repairmen are this lonely,
00:16:45.760 but we're trying. Maytag.
00:16:47.380 We also make great dishwashers.
00:16:49.240 Working on the Maytag.
00:16:51.280 Working on the Maytag.
00:16:54.200 Boy, it's sure good to be actually working on a Maytag.
00:16:57.560 It's been a while.
00:16:58.920 You know, that's the trouble with you Maytag washers and dryers.
00:17:02.100 You're too dependable.
00:17:03.880 It's not often that anybody needs us Maytag repairmen.
00:17:07.500 That's why we're the loneliest guys in town.
00:17:10.760 I'm working on the Maytag.
00:17:13.740 So the whole sales pitch is that Maytag's appliances were reliable.
00:17:18.940 Their washers and dryers and dishwashers weren't going to need a repairman
00:17:21.800 so he could just relax because they were built to last.
00:17:26.520 And plenty of other brands used the same strategy as this.
00:17:30.760 It seems like a pretty good selling point.
00:17:33.460 Timex ran the ads where they promised that their watches would take a licking and keep on ticking.
00:17:38.440 and Ford promised that Ford trucks last longer.
00:17:43.200 Again, customers expected that products
00:17:44.640 would last a very long time.
00:17:46.520 And most corporations had not yet mastered the art
00:17:49.680 of planned obsolescence or maximizing shareholder value.
00:17:53.500 So they gave customers what they wanted.
00:17:56.480 Now, fast forward a few decades
00:17:58.020 and ads look more like this one from GE.
00:18:04.080 This innovative profile dishwasher makes life easier
00:18:08.040 when you connect. To unlock more features like Smart Assist, simply download the Smart HQ app.
00:18:16.120 Smart Assist uses intelligent machine learning and diagnostics to enhance wash and dry performance.
00:18:23.800 Sensors constantly monitor the dishwasher's progress and will send a notification through
00:18:29.480 the Smart HQ app if attention is needed. Now I'll admit that in certain situations having
00:18:34.920 Having a Wi-Fi connected appliance can be a good idea.
00:18:38.040 It could be useful to remotely control your thermostat with your phone, I guess.
00:18:42.640 Or hypothetically, you could even use your iPhone to access the camera on your Roomba
00:18:47.460 and spot a home invasion in progress and race home and shoot the burglars.
00:18:51.940 Those are completely plausible scenarios that are made possible by the wonders of online-enabled smart appliances.
00:18:58.340 But when your dishwasher claims that it's using machine learning, it's time to draw the line.
00:19:03.860 I mean, there's no universe in which machine learning and a dishwasher should appear within
00:19:08.700 the same sentence. It's totally absurd. No sane person wants to get dishwasher notifications
00:19:14.820 on their phone. This is one of the most self-defeating things about all these smart
00:19:19.440 appliances. The whole point of a household appliance is that it's supposed to do a job for you
00:19:24.380 and take it off of your plate. But now with smart appliances all routed through your Wi-Fi,
00:19:30.240 connected to your phone, not only do you have more features that can easily break and
00:19:33.840 all that kind of stuff, your appliances are constantly nagging you. They take up more space
00:19:39.120 in your mind and your life, not less. You know, the idea back in the day was, yeah, you're spending
00:19:44.940 a lot of money on the appliance, you invest in it, and you're going to have it for a long time,
00:19:49.660 and it just kind of does its job. You don't have to think about it.
00:19:53.780 And it's not like that anymore. Now, admittedly, I've never connected any of my appliances to my
00:19:58.560 phone because I don't really like receiving text messages from most humans I know, much less
00:20:03.500 receiving them from my oven or my ice maker.
00:20:06.660 But I know plenty of people who are fully connected
00:20:08.740 and integrated with their appliances.
00:20:10.760 They receive real-time updates and push notifications
00:20:13.640 from their refrigerator and their washer and dryer and crock pot.
00:20:18.120 It's like being in a never-ending group chat
00:20:20.120 with every inanimate object in your house.
00:20:23.400 Why not bring your sofa and your coffee table
00:20:25.280 into the conversation at this point?
00:20:26.540 It's totally ridiculous.
00:20:27.660 As you'd expect, all of this comes with a very big catch.
00:20:31.280 Because everything does.
00:20:32.680 Watch.
00:20:33.500 This weekend I had to buy a new dishwasher because our old GE died. I bought a Bosch 500 series
00:20:38.620 because that's what Consumer Reports recommended, and more importantly, I could find one in stock.
00:20:42.940 After my dad and I got it installed, I went to run a rinse cycle only to find that that,
00:20:46.940 along with features like delayed start and eco mode, require an app. Not only that, to use the
00:20:52.780 app you have to connect your dishwasher to Wi-Fi, set up a cloud account in something called Home
00:20:57.580 Connect, and then, and only then, can you start using all the features on the dishwasher. We
00:21:02.540 wanted to run just a rinse cycle to make sure the water would go in the water would pump out through
00:21:06.700 the sump and everything would would be working but i could not find a way to do a rinse cycle
00:21:12.780 on the control panel so i looked in this book and found this page this page shows
00:21:18.300 that the rinse cycle has an asterisk the asterisk if you look down at the bottom says available
00:21:24.060 through home connect app only and depending on your model if you have a cloud app that means
00:21:29.740 there's a cloud service that has to be running that costs money to maintain and if there's no
00:21:33.900 subscription fee right now that means one of two things one they could be selling our data already
00:21:39.980 i didn't look at the full terms of service or anything so i don't know if they already are
00:21:43.740 but that's one possibility the other one is at some point they'll either close the service
00:21:47.740 because it's a cost center that they don't want to pay for and it costs maintenance once you have
00:21:53.180 a million users using this thing or two they're going to charge a subscription and all of a sudden
00:21:59.260 if you want to use rinse mode it's going to be five bucks a month forever so in addition to being
00:22:04.540 more inconvenient the intelligent machine learning wi-fi enabled dishwasher also has access to your
00:22:10.540 personal information once you install their app on your phone which i don't know why anybody would
00:22:16.060 ever do you're giving them your name your email address your phone number they're learning how
00:22:22.220 often you wash the dishes they're learning when you're at home etc and presumably they're either
00:22:27.580 selling this information or they're planning to monetize it in some other way. Now, if you asked
00:22:32.340 a random customer, which would you prefer? A dishwasher that lasts 50 years or a dishwasher
00:22:39.020 that connects to your Wi-Fi and floods your kitchen in three years? Every single one of them
00:22:43.120 would choose the 50-year option. But none of these companies are even trying to make a product like
00:22:47.620 that. They're not even trying. Collectively, they've all decided to create worse products
00:22:52.940 in tandem to improve their margins and ensure planned obsolescence. It's probably not some
00:22:59.440 antitrust conspiracy, but it doesn't have to be. It's a happy medium for these corporations,
00:23:04.700 and we're all paying for it. Most people do not understand health insurance. You pay an
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00:23:29.500 cost-sharing ministry where Christians voluntarily come together to share each other's eligible
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00:23:56.100 considering a model built around Christians helping other Christians when they need it.
00:24:00.940 Get started today by visiting chministries.org slash Walsh. That's chministries.org slash Walsh.
00:24:09.060 One of the great disappointments of adulthood is discovering how often your mother was right.
00:24:14.140 You do need to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Money does not, in fact, grow on trees. And apparently, you really should eat your fruits and vegetables. It's all very irritating.
00:24:24.100 Balance of Nature at least makes that last part easier. Their fruits and veggie supplements give you a simple way to add more whole fruits and vegetables into your daily routine.
00:24:33.020 No elaborate health ritual, just something easy to do every day.
00:24:37.200 Go to BounceNature.com, use promo code Walsh, and get 10% off any subscription, plus a free guiltless snack.
00:24:44.900 Mom wins again.
00:24:46.180 Most people have been paying the same wireless company every month for years without ever stopping to ask why it costs so much.
00:24:52.620 Well, you should probably ask, especially because right now Pure Talk is offering any plan for just $15 a month for your first three months.
00:25:00.560 this is only going to last for just a few more weeks. Even the top tier unlimited plan, normally
00:25:05.800 $65 a month is $15 for those first three months. That's up to $150 in savings. It's not complicated.
00:25:13.400 Do the math and switch. Go to puretalk.com slash Walsh. Now, a big part of the problem is that
00:25:20.520 all across the appliance industry, plastic housing is increasingly used for critical
00:25:26.120 components. In a dishwasher, you know, that includes the pump or the spray arms. Very often
00:25:30.800 this is presented as a safety measure rather than attempt to cut costs or to, you know, force the
00:25:35.660 machines to fail so that they need to be replaced, even though that's very often what's actually
00:25:39.580 happening. But the truth is usually a lot more complicated. So take mixers, for example. If you
00:25:44.440 buy a KitchenAid mixer today, even an expensive one, the machine is almost certainly going to have
00:25:48.920 a single nylon gear inside called a worm gear. And the primary role of the worm gear is to transfer
00:25:55.340 rotational power from the motor to the gears, which then allow the mixing attachment to work.
00:25:59.840 But the worm gear also functions as a mechanical fuse. It's designed to strip and shed if the
00:26:06.780 mixer ever encounters too much resistance, which in turn will immediately stop the mixer from
00:26:10.200 working, protecting the motor and the gears from any further damage. But as many people have pointed
00:26:15.240 out, this safety feature does not simply kick in during a rare emergency. Instead, after a few years,
00:26:20.040 the worm gear seems to inevitably fall apart, regardless of how you're using the mixer. And
00:26:24.800 according to many different reports you'll find online,
00:26:26.940 this failure mode is very new
00:26:28.860 because back in the day,
00:26:29.760 the worm gear was made of metal instead of plastic.
00:26:33.560 Supposedly these mixers were much more reliable
00:26:35.640 when a company called Hobart was making the mixers
00:26:37.860 before Whirlpool took over in 1986.
00:26:41.220 Here's just one example of a video
00:26:43.300 that makes this claim, watch.
00:26:45.880 Let me introduce you to the part
00:26:47.520 they hope you never learn about.
00:26:49.600 It is called the worm follower gear.
00:26:52.020 In every modern KitchenAid tilt-head mixer, hidden inside that beautiful metal body, there is a gear made of nylon.
00:27:00.020 Plastic. In a machine that costs $300 to $500, there is a $3 plastic gear that is guaranteed to fail.
00:27:08.020 Here is what they do not say.
00:27:10.020 Your grandmother's Hobart-era mixer had thermal overload protection built into the motor itself.
00:27:16.020 If she overloaded it, the motor would shut off automatically, cool down for a few minutes, and restart.
00:27:23.020 No parts destroyed. No repair needed.
00:27:27.020 The machine protected itself without sacrificing anything.
00:27:31.020 The plastic gear does not protect you.
00:27:34.020 The plastic gear guarantees a future transaction.
00:27:38.020 Either you pay a repair technician to open the machine and replace it,
00:27:42.020 it or you decide the repair cost is not worth it and you buy a new mixer. Either way, the company
00:27:49.140 wins. A viewer named Susan from Michigan sent me photographs of her mixer's gearbox after it failed.
00:27:55.780 The plastic gear had been ground into white powder. She said it looked like someone had
00:27:59.940 grated a candle inside her KitchenAid. Now there are aspects of this claim that are true
00:28:05.380 and some that are made up. The important point, which most people don't realize, is that KitchenAid
00:28:10.260 does indeed include nylon worm gears in most of their models and these gears are very prone
00:28:15.300 to failure over time and if you don't use your mixer in accordance with the manual
00:28:19.060 then you're going to accelerate this timeline drastically if you read all the documentation
00:28:23.060 that came with your mixer which of course nobody does you'll learn that you need to
00:28:27.300 use low speeds when you're mixing yeast dough for example on the other hand professional grade
00:28:31.780 mixers including some sold by kitchenaid use all metal gears assemblies and even ordinary
00:28:36.500 mixers from the 80s had much better construction than what you'll find today. So take a look at
00:28:40.860 this shot, which I pulled from the website Mixerology, along with all of my knowledge
00:28:46.280 on the topic of mixers. I've become suddenly an expert on the topic, never meant to be.
00:28:51.340 This is what the kids would call a gear mogging, I guess. I'm not going to pretend to be an actual
00:28:57.240 expert on the topic, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that if I had the option,
00:29:02.520 I'd rather have the mixer that doesn't look like a child's toy.
00:29:06.900 But today, you don't get that option, at least unless you spring for a much more expensive professional mixer.
00:29:12.640 Evidently, these professional mixers come with fully metal transmissions,
00:29:17.620 and the worm gear follower is made of bronze, not nylon.
00:29:21.800 This is reportedly the case for the Professional HD and Professional 600 model types, among others.
00:29:28.000 And while the bronze gear can theoretically still fail, of course, it's much more resilient.
00:29:32.520 You can also find professional mixers mostly used in high-volume cafeterias that don't have a
00:29:36.980 mechanical fuse at all. They use an integrated motor and transmission assembly. And as you expect,
00:29:41.860 they have a much, much lower failure rate than your mixer at home. Now, what's misleading about
00:29:47.120 the KitchenAid content you'll find online, and yes, it's an entire genre somehow, is the suggestion
00:29:52.980 that older household mixers didn't have the nylon gear. They did. This wasn't a modern change to
00:29:57.960 suddenly force your mixer to fail. Wirecutter recently tore down an old KitchenAid mixer and
00:30:03.760 they found very similar components in an old mixer as compared to one that you buy today.
00:30:08.320 That said, as I just mentioned, the quality of the construction in those old mixers was still
00:30:12.160 visibly superior to anything you can buy off a shelf right now for a reasonable price anyway.
00:30:17.380 As it stands, if your KitchenAid mixer becomes disabled, you have a couple of options. You can
00:30:21.460 buy a new mixer, which is obviously what KitchenAid wants you to do. It's also the most common option.
00:30:26.620 Alternatively, you can pay a technician $100 to fix it, or you can replace the part yourself.
00:30:32.260 And here's what that looks like.
00:30:33.220 It's a fairly involved process that will take about 30 minutes out of your day.
00:30:37.000 Watch.
00:30:38.080 Welcome to Redneck Light.
00:30:39.620 Today, I'm going to be showing you how to disassemble, rebuild, and re-grease a 4.5-quart KitchenAid mixer.
00:30:47.300 This is a classic tilt-head model with the sacrificial plastic worm gear.
00:30:51.540 by design it fails before the motor fails and the repair is fairly inexpensive compared to
00:30:58.180 buying a completely new one it is a messy job but totally doable by an at-home user like i said
00:31:04.440 you're you're almost aiming to make a mess with this we're just really trying to
00:31:12.220 go nuts all right so there you can see the very heavily greased bits and
00:31:22.240 pieces of the KitchenAid mixer and that's now the very back of this you're
00:31:26.980 going to push the power cord boot back into its slot here make sure everything
00:31:36.700 looks okay test the switch make sure it looks like it's moving okay now if you're the kind of
00:31:45.820 person who's willing to deal with this hassle repairing the gear is cheap but if you're like
00:31:49.380 the vast majority of kitchen aid customers and your machine dies on you after a few years you
00:31:52.660 become frustrated you buy a new one that's the whole point but again i don't want to imply that
00:31:57.780 all of these problems are invented by executives just to wring more money out of you um although
00:32:03.040 that is happening. The government also played a very big role across a variety of industries.
00:32:08.480 When Wirecutter spoke to some repairmen, they immediately pointed to federal regulations
00:32:13.100 concerning water and energy efficiency as the root cause of many problems that people deal with when
00:32:19.860 it comes to these kitchen appliances. Quote, the main culprit is the set of efficiency standards
00:32:25.000 for water and energy use for all cooking, refrigeration, and cleaning appliances. Those
00:32:29.880 standards have been managed by the Department of Energy since 1987 and frequently updated.
00:32:33.600 The rules are evaluated at least once every six years after each amendment. Most of the
00:32:39.000 significant changes arrived in the early 2000s, and they have been updated several times since.
00:32:43.220 Before those updates, appliances were road tested for decades. Brand representatives would even ride
00:32:47.780 along with his technicians as they worked on appliances and monitor the failures and what
00:32:52.140 goes on inside. Now the models change a lot more often. More importantly, to meet any new standard,
00:32:56.860 the appliances often move from analog parts to digital components, such as computer circuit
00:33:01.700 boards. So the constant changes prevent long-term testing from taking place while also introducing
00:33:07.620 many more components that can fail. And by the way, just in case you think that this was a
00:33:13.860 partisan issue, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, which we all remember,
00:33:20.200 passed the Senate with 89 votes. The House approved it with a voice vote. So we're talking
00:33:24.540 at overwhelming support from both political parties for empowering the Department of Energy
00:33:28.400 to ruin as many household appliances as possible. The law was signed into law by Reagan, who
00:33:34.840 supported the law because appliance manufacturers who lobbied hard for the bill were frustrated by
00:33:39.000 the patchwork of state laws that were regulating their products. They wanted a uniform federal
00:33:43.520 standard, and they got one. Mechanical timers were replaced by circuit boards. Plastics replaced
00:33:50.260 metals, as we discussed. Motors became smaller and used less water. This was a theme of Reagan's
00:33:56.980 presidency. He created a framework that in the following decades would become a disaster. He did
00:34:03.640 it with immigration and his amnesty. He did it again with this legislation. Under George W. Bush,
00:34:10.200 the Department of Energy gained even more power. And then under Obama, the regulations intensified
00:34:15.720 even further. This was a bipartisan effort to screw us over, as most bipartisan efforts are.
00:34:24.680 We'll close with one more practical example of the effects of these regulations,
00:34:28.600 specifically the regulations governing water use. Now, again, I'm not an expert on the topic,
00:34:33.500 but it's fascinating to see exactly how the government can manage to cause problems
00:34:38.120 with your washing machine. So I found a service center in San Diego that pointed out many of the
00:34:44.960 issues caused by eco-related regulations that conserve water, and here's what they had to say.
00:34:51.760 Quote, the logic is simple. Washer machines need sufficient water to create effective agitation
00:34:56.560 and detergent distribution. When water levels are reduced, clothes do not move as freely,
00:35:01.800 and detergent may not dissolve fully. The result is uneven cleaning and an accumulation of grime
00:35:06.620 inside the drum, hoses, and filters. This hidden buildup can cause malfunctions, unpleasant odors,
00:35:11.440 and even accelerate wear on critical components
00:35:13.760 such as pumps and seals.
00:35:15.700 High-efficiency machines are designed to use less water,
00:35:18.240 but their sensors and cycles rely on careful balance.
00:35:20.560 If a machine's sensors misread the load,
00:35:22.640 size, or detergent amount,
00:35:24.620 it may use even less water than intended.
00:35:26.380 Over weeks and months,
00:35:27.220 small compromises in water usage
00:35:29.360 can lead to a steady decline in performance.
00:35:31.860 Users often notice that clothes look cleaner
00:35:33.940 but feel stiff, smell faintly musty,
00:35:36.680 or require extra cycles for stubborn stains.
00:35:40.140 Reduced water levels also strain the appliance, causing pumps to work harder, along with uneven wear on the drums, detergent residue, since it's not fully rinsed, can corrode components, and on and on.
00:35:54.740 So, how do you benefit from any of this?
00:35:57.680 Maybe your utility bills will be a little bit lower, but that's about it.
00:36:02.420 In exchange, you get an expensive washing machine that's doomed to fail in a few years.
00:36:06.720 Oh, and all of your other appliances got worse, too.
00:36:09.240 courtesy of the federal government. Now, if there's any silver lining here, it's that in 2024,
00:36:15.280 the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron Doctrine. We talked about this case at the time. The ruling
00:36:20.600 basically means that Congress can't delegate everything to federal agencies like the Department
00:36:25.580 of Energy. In other words, every once in a while, Congress needs to pass a law using the
00:36:31.740 constitutional process rather than allowing bureaucrats at the Department of Energy to
00:36:36.520 effectively pass laws by themselves, which is what's been happening. Agencies are no longer
00:36:41.040 entitled to the benefit of the doubt in every case, and that's good news if someone decides to
00:36:47.100 sue the Department of Energy to roll back some of these inane regulations that are making our
00:36:52.640 everyday life much worse in many respects. There's a real opportunity to do something
00:36:57.740 about these regulations for the first time in decades. And once that happens, who knows? Maybe
00:37:03.680 we'll usher in a new era of human progress. Maybe we'll colonize Mars in a few years.
00:37:10.140 Because you see, when we're not drowning ourselves in regulations, there's actually a lot we can
00:37:14.160 achieve. All we have to do is admit, once again, that Reagan made a mistake. We have to make it
00:37:21.060 clear that people are entitled to demand functional products, even if that means paying more up front,
00:37:27.060 and even if that means we're using a little more water in the process.
00:37:30.280 And if you doubt that it's possible, remember, we once landed on the moon.
00:37:35.100 And we did land on the moon.
00:37:37.420 We also, once upon a time, created a toaster that doesn't burn the bread.
00:37:42.740 And we can easily return to that era of American excellence if we're willing to do so.
00:37:48.460 This is a far more worthy cause than a lot of the stuff that people talk about.
00:37:53.380 It's a more worthy cause than all the BLM riots combined.
00:37:56.360 So the next time your Wi-Fi-enabled washing machine destroys your entire kitchen or the next time your KitchenAid mixer spontaneously combusts, remember the words of the old civil rights heroes of yesteryear and get yourself into some good trouble.
00:38:13.540 Take to the streets. Seek the justice that you and your dirty dishes so rightly deserve.
00:38:18.780 Future generations and future customers of household appliances in particular will thank you for your sacrifice.
00:38:25.120 And next time there's a Labor Day appliance sale, for the first time in recorded history, people will actually be excited about it.
00:38:33.320 And with apologies to George Floyd and John Lewis, it's hard to imagine a more meaningful legacy than that.
00:38:41.780 That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week. Have a great weekend. Godspeed.
00:38:55.120 years of public life. I have never profited from public service. I welcome this kind of examination
00:39:02.500 because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
00:39:07.860 For more than five decades, from Iran-Contra to Monica Lewinsky to Russiagate, every political
00:39:12.880 scandal has been measured against one, the Watergate affair. But what if Richard Nixon
00:39:17.840 was telling the truth? What if Watergate isn't what it seems? What if hundreds of thousands of
00:39:23.420 Pages of sworn testimony, memoirs,
00:39:25.700 and newly released government documents
00:39:28.040 tell a different story than the one you learned in school.
00:39:31.060 I know America.
00:39:32.160 In 1972, Nixon won the biggest electoral landslide
00:39:35.400 in modern American history with grand plans
00:39:37.800 to remake the federal government.
00:39:39.800 Two years later, he was out of office.
00:39:42.260 You were taught that Nixon's men broke into the Democratic
00:39:45.020 National Committee headquarters
00:39:46.240 to spy on his political opponents.
00:39:48.320 You were taught that when he found out, Nixon covered it up,
00:39:52.400 and that the cover-up was worse than the crime.
00:39:55.660 You were taught that two heroic Washington Post reporters,
00:39:58.800 guided by a righteous FBI whistleblower,
00:40:01.960 brought the most powerful man in the world to justice.
00:40:04.920 But you were never taught what really happened.
00:40:07.360 I shall resign the presidency,
00:40:08.920 effective at noon tomorrow.
00:40:10.540 The real history of the Watergate scandal
00:40:12.520 is available now on Daily Wire+.