Consumers seeking a deal could be a symptom of affordability problems as wages stagnate while inflation keeps prices going up.

One could also blame corporate greed here as well, choosing to keep those extra profits or distributing them at the executive level, rather than increasing wages for employees to maintain their buying power.

So instead of more money to buy better quality items, we get things like Temu as the answer, selling trash and framing it as “shop like a billionaire.”