Which makes more sense - something good that will last, or something cheap that you discard and replace every few years? It turns out many issues are involved - Salon comments on Cheap, the High Cost of a Discount Culture, by Ellen Ruppel Shell.
snip:
"Cheap" is hardly a finger-waggling book. This isn't a screed designed to make us feel guilty for unknowingly benefiting from the hardships of workers in other parts of the world. And Shell -- who writes regularly for the Atlantic -- isn't talking about the shallowness of consumerism here; she makes it clear that she, like most of us, enjoys the hunt for a good deal. "Cheap" really is about us,meaning not just Americans, but citizens of the world, and about what we stand to lose in a global economic environment that threatens the very nature of meaningful work, work we can take pride in and build a career on -- or even at which we can just make a living.
Discount chains pretend to be the most democratic of enterprises, willing and able to fill our every need at a price we can afford: Ingenious slogans like "Design for All" (Target) and "Save money. Live Better" (Wal-Mart) make that point pretty well. Shell asserts that an excess of cheap goods -- and the drive to make and sell them ever more cheaply -- is putting a deadly squeeze on workers worldwide. Most liberal-leaning citizens are aware of the profit-making schemes of Wal-Mart and, even if we actually shop there, find them distasteful (although Shell notes that among economists, the chain has its defenders).
But Shell asserts that even outlet malls and seemingly benign, friendly, progressive stores like IKEA are part of the problem; along with more obvious bad guys like Wal-Mart, they perpetuate a cycle that, far from nurturing creativity and innovation in the marketplace, ultimately benefits a relative few at the very top of the economic chain. Shell notes that before retiring in February 2009, "Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott Jr. took home in his biweekly paycheck what his average employee earned in a lifetime." You might say that, for Scott, the good news is that everybody can afford to shop at Wal-Mart; the better news is that he himself doesn't have to.
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