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Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture QUOTES

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture QUOTES

1 " The typical capitalists are lovers of power rather than sensual indulgence, but they have the same tendency to crush and to take tribute that the cruder types of sensualism possess. The discipline of the capitalist is the same as that of the frugalist. He differs from the latter in that he has no regard for the objects through which productive power is acquired. HE does not hesitate to exploit natural resources, lands, dumb animals and even his fellowman. Capital to such a man is an abstract fund, made up of perishable elements which are quickly replaced… The frugalist…stands in marked contrast to the attitude of the capitalist. The frugalist takes a vital interest in his tools, in his land, and in the goods he produces. He has a definite attachment to each. He dislikes to see an old coat wear out, an old wagon break down, or an old horse go lame. He always thinks of concrete things, wants them and nothing else. He desires not land, but a given farm, not horses or cattle and machines, but particular breeds and implements; not shelter, but a home…. He rejects as unworthy what is below standard and despises as luxurious what is above or outside of it. Dominated by activities, he thinks of capital as a means to an end. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

2 " ...mass market consumption offers the facade of social equality without forcing society to go through the hard work of redistributing wealth. Low prices lead consumers to think they can get what they want without necessarily giving them what they want - or need. The ancient Roman phrase for this is panem et circenses, bread and circuses, the art of plying citizens with pleasures to distract them from pain. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

3 " Cheap objects resist involvement. We tend to invest less in their purchase, care, and maintenance, and that's part of what makes them so attractive. Cheap clothing lines—sold at discounters such as Target and H & M—are like IKEA emblems of the "cheap chic" where styles fills in for whatever quality goes lacking. There is nothing sinister in this, no deliberate planned obsolescence. These objects are not designed to fall apart, nor are they crafted not to fall apart. In many cases we know this and accept it, and have entered into a sort of compact. Perhaps we don't even want the object to last forever. Such voluntary obsolescence makes craftsmanship beside the point. We have grown to expect and even relish the easy birth and early death of objects. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

4 " Discounters gave the common man and woman the opportunity to eschew the cobbler and the darning needle, to break in a brand-new pair of shoes or socks when their toes poked through the old ones. Discounters made ordinary folks feel rich by putting a wide selection of goods within easy reach of all but the most meager budgets. Someone had to pay, of course, but that someone need not be the customer. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

5 " Andrew Young, a former U.S. Congressman and U.N. ambassador turned Wal-Mart spokesman, seemed to offer an explanation: “Poverty in America,” he said, “is market potential unrealized.” It seems that the poor benefit the discounting industry far more than the discounting industry benefits the poor. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

6 " If enough dishonest merchants water their milk, more and more customers will forget what normal milk tastes like and buy only the cheaper - watered down - variety. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

7 " Americans pay less for food than do citizens of any other developed nation. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

8 " Craftsmanship cements a relationship of trust between buyer and seller, worker and employer, and expects something of both. It is about caring about the work and its application. It is what distinguishes the work of humans from the work of machines, and it is everything that IKEA and other discounters are not. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

9 " Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to China. U.S. Department of Commerce data reveal that from 2002 to 2003 Mexico lost market share in thirteen of its top twenty export industries, nearly always to China. With fewer jobs at home, Mexicans are finding it all the more compelling to cross the border into the United States in search of work. No fence is high enough to bar workers desperate to feed their families. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

10 " At a national level, the study found that thanks to Wal-Mart the total earnings of retail workers declined by $4.5 billion, with most of these losses concentrated in metropolitan areas. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

11 " since wage and benefit savings are not the main part of the cost advantage for the company it could (conceivably) “continue to pass on most of these savings while paying higher wages and benefits. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

12 " In the early days of outlets, manufacturers ripped labels from items because they were reluctant to link their brand with the cut-rate price. But today many discounters do just the opposite, trumpeting goods under brand names to give the impression of quality while not necessarily backing that claim in a meaningful way. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

13 " Compared with the early 1970s, in 2007 we spent 32 percent less on clothes, 18 percent less on food, 52 percent less on appliances, and 24 percent less on owning and maintaining a car. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

14 " MIT-trained urban development expert Wig Zamore said: “IKEA is the least sustainable retailer on the planet. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

15 " Carter found particularly noxious “a mistaken idea of freedom [as] the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

16 " As citizens we recognize this "collateral damage," deplore it, and frequently decry it. But as consumers we habitually downplay and ignore it. We rail against exploitation of low-paid workers in Asia as we drive twenty minutes to the Big Box to save three bucks on tube socks and a dollar on underpants. We fume over the mistreatment of animals by agribusiness but freak out at an uptick in food prices. We lecture our kids on social responsibility and then buy them toys assembled by destitute child workers on some far-flung foreign shore. Maintaining cognitive dissonance is one way to navigate a world of contradictions, and on an individual basis there's much to be said for this. But somehow the Age of Cheap has raised cognitive dissonance to a societal norm. "

― , Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture