[_a_a_a_]

Society 'upgraded' how - what does that mean?

Anyway, there is an environmental price as well as a $$$ price to clothing production. What you pay might not be the true price (eg. aquifers getting drained, soil erosion, CO2 emission etc, possible deforestation).

Even ignoring my point about non-fiscal cost "that can be bought new for a day's or even a week's wages" is great if you're rich, even relatively speaking. From wiki: "...which found roughly 734 million people [in the world] remained in absolute poverty [circa 2015]". I guess you grew up not having your parents unable to buy except as a last resort and having to patch everything repeatedly.

[ponow]

Your point was that, now, "it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments", ergo, society has upgraded (its expectations of acceptable wear), i.e., moved the "goal posts". That means, we solved the old problem of not putting people in rags, and have a new problem, of constantly new outfits. Absolute gain: clothing problem "solved", replaced with new "wardrobe problem". This is what progress looks like. We always find new, harder, problems. The fact that there is a problem distracts people from admitting we have solved some.

You're moving the goal posts in your rebuttal by adding environmental concerns.

Absolute poverty has been dropping dramatically as a fraction of the growing world population. Look at the trends, not the snapshot. Show some fricking gratitude for the world of plenty in which humanity exists.