Magazines all used to be huge, like LIFE used to be. Since about 1975 they have been shrinking towards the size of a TV guide. Mad Magazine already spoofed this trend for products to shrink in the late 50s.

Detergent boxes in the fifties were filled to the brim and the big "economy" size was simply the regular size. Now most contain lots of air and even the detergent has more filler non-soap content.

The old 1950s-1960s glass coffee jar was almost the size of a basketball. Now you get a plastic container with 1/30th the content for ten times the price.

A bottle of aspirin used to contain hundreds of pill for about 25 cents. Now you can get a bottle with a huge wad of cotton stuffed in it and twenty aspirin pills - for about 3 or 4 dollars.

Packaging for nearly every single product has been the target of savings. Cereals, raisins, soup cans, and anything you can buy at a market or pharmacy has been scaled back either blatantly or clandestinely.

My favorite are the plastic bottles with concave bumps on the bottom to take away content. These bumps keep getting bigger and the sculpting of thes bottles is the work of artisan who like geometry. Its a trick to make something look the same size while ever shrinking the contents.

Yes, it's absurd for those who have lived long enough to recognize the difference. It's part of the ever present decline in buying power that has accompanied the mass market, industrial era. Companies cut back and do what they can to save. The emphasis on corporate savings has become such a mantra and so widespread that few companies deliver their products in unabashed abundance. Even water, the most common substance on the surface of the earth, is now fancy packaged and renamed in small sculpted bottles for a nice profit.

Often more money is spent on artful packaging these days than on the product within the packaging.

Write letters. Try and shame the companies back to providing an honest product for the price. Do what you can. The future only promises even more of the same. A single aspirin packaged and dispensed for a dollar? A cough bottle sized package of detergent or fabric softener? Packaging with bottom bumps that practically rise to the top of the containers? Magazines the size of an old fifties paperback book? All these and more are almost surefire realities racing towards the generations now alive.

There are still some decent values out there. It just takes more and more effort and time to find them. Being a smart capitalist requires an increasing amount of effort.

That said...capitalism is still the best system in the world for providing quality of life to the masses.

;-)