If you’ve ever wondered why so many products are cheaply made and don’t last, Ellen Ruppel Shell has the answer. She explores the Wal-Mart effect of discounting everything and the unintended consequences in terms of destruction of small businesses and impoverishing workers. Shell shows that globalization extracts a high price for all those cheap products. What we’ve been taught about materialism as a “bargain” has some dangerous side-effects. The whole “race-to-the-bottom” issue gets a good airing. I found Cheap a fascinating analysis of our economy and culture. GRADE: A
I’m afraid that’s one of the biggest problems in American society today. Everybody wants everything and the want it cheap. They want the best health care coverage but they don’t want to pay for it, and politicians are pandering to them by telling them they can cut their texes and still provide everything they want and “someone else” (I guess) will pay, like the next generations.
/end political rant
The “bargain” and “I-got-a-deal” mentality has a price tag and this book tells you what it is, Jeff. I’m in total agreement with you.
It’s truth in America that everyone wants to be first, everyone wants to be an exception, and everyone wants a deal.
Rather than save – or save longer – in order to purchase a quality item, these days (since the 1980s, it seems to me) everyone wants it: Now, Inexpensive, Fast, and yet Of Good Quality. That’s asking for the moon. When was the last time you – anyone reading this – looked at something in your home and thought “the person who made this really cared about the work”? Maybe never, unless you have antiques.
I won’t read this, it would just depress me, but I’m pretty sure I’d agree with the premises in it.
Ellen Ruppel Shell makes a pretty strong case for looking at the costs of a cut-rate, bargain price culture, Rick. Yes, this book is depressing. But it really lays the whole problem out.
I listened to someone complain about spending $40 on a pair of slacks last week. What the hell do they expect to pay when you factor in the labor, material, shipping, retailing and other costs. We are so unrealistic.
I’m with Rick about not reading it. After Nickel and Dimed I took to bed for a week.
CHEAP mines the same vein as NICKEL AND DIMED, Patti. You would have the same sense of outrage. The problem is: how do we fix this?