Book Review: ‘Cheap’ engaging, lacks cohesive argument
By LAURA IMPELLIZZERI The Associated Press
“Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” (Penguin Press, 287 pages, $25.95), by Ellen Ruppel Shell
No current picture of American economic behavior or history can be pretty. Home foreclosures keep escalating, while housing prices erase six years of gains. Unemployment is rising. And conditions are even scarier in the countries that produce most of the goods that support the U.S. addiction to consumption.
But Ellen Ruppel Shell’s chronicle of American pursuit of low prices offers more than hindsight: We all now know that nothing in our economy was as benign as it seemed.
Her research was prodigious, and her critique can be engaging as it enlightens.
The central problem, Shell writes, is that we aren’t necessarily getting a deal when we buy something cheap. Sometimes we’re not even saving money – as in the case of outlets – and, often, our purchases have astronomical longer-term costs.
Behind the low prices at Wal-Mart, which limit its own workers’ pay, Shell sees manufacturers less able to innovate and invest in future production because they must always reduce costs as much as possible.
And by no means is Wal-Mart villain No. 1; we’re all complicit in Shell’s view.
Take shrimp, for example. Advances in technology, aquaculture and transportation transformed the delicacy into a vehicle out of poverty for subsistence farmers in Thailand.
But – even as American restaurant customers demanded higher piles of the crustaceans – consolidation and then overfarming produced an oversupply. Many small farmers quit, abandoning their now permanently contaminated land and ending up with even less than they started.
But Shell ultimately makes a strong case that market forces and human tendencies naturally combine in the drive for cheaply made goods at rock-bottom prices. To the extent those trends are indelible (and she traces them to 16th century England and beyond) “Cheap” falls short of a cohesive argument.
Shell suggests in conclusion that we “rekindle our acquaintance with craftsmanship” and “make our own choices” – businesses and governments, as well as individuals.
That sounds like expecting addicts to shape up all on their own.
