Let them eat organic food and buy expensive products

[Puppycow]

There are various schools of economics, such as the Keynesian School, the Chicago School, the Austrian School and the Marxist School. Let me propose a name for another school of economics: The Neo-Antoinette School.
Some axioms of this school:
1) Industrialization is bad.
2) Commercialization is bad.
3) Cheap products are bad.
4) Corporations are bad.
5) Globalization is bad.
6) Locally-grown food is good.
Etc.

I'm not normally a fan of Charlotte Allen (I'm an atheist for one thing, although not a "movement atheist"). But I agree with some points in her recent Op-Ed in the LA Times.
Keep your self-righteous fingers off my processed food
A few grafs from this Op-Ed:

The latest cheerleader for higher prices is Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor of science journalism at Boston University who has just published a book titled "Cheap." It's not a guide to bargain-hunting. The theme of Shell's book, subtitled "The High Cost of Discount Culture," is "America's dangerous liaison with Cheap."

Shell's argument goes like this: Shopping at discount stores, factory outlets and, of course, Wal-Mart (no work of social criticism is complete without a drive-by shooting aimed at that chain) exploits Chinese factory workers (who would much rather be back on the collective farm wearing their Mao suits) and degrades the environment because much of the low-price junk wears out and ends up in landfills.
. . .

"The economics of Cheap cramps innovation, contributes to the decline of once flourishing industries, and threatens our proud heritage of craftsmanship," she writes. In her view, we should all save up for "responsibly made quality goods," preferably from shops attainable by "public transit."
. . .
In an online debate with the Atlantic's economics writer, Megan McArdle, Shell observes with disapproval that, when prices are adjusted for inflation, Americans today spend "40% less on clothes, 20% less on food, more than 50% less on appliances, about 25% less on owning and maintaining a car" than they did during the early 1970s. Over that same period, Census Bureau tables show, U.S. median household income rose by at least 18% in constant dollars -- despite the much-lamented (by Shell and others) decampment of "once flourishing" manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere. That's why even America's poorest people nowadays can afford automobiles, cellphones and TVs.
. . .
[Michael] Pollan is a "locavore," one of those people who believe that in order to be truly ethical, you should eat only foods grown or killed within your line of sight (for me, that would be my neighbor's cat). He once described a meal he made consisting of a wild boar shot by him in the hills near his Bay Area home and laboriously turned into pate, plus bread leavened by yeast spores foraged from his backyard.

Lately, Pollan has set his sights on Häagen-Dazs ice cream, not because it contains corn syrup (it doesn't) but because it's a commercially made product, and if there's one thing Pollan hates, it's commerce. His latest pronunciamento: "Don't buy any food you've ever seen advertised."

People like Pollan and Shell mean well, but they don't understand economics and don't understand the true economic consequences of their theories. For that, I recommend the following excellent article by Nicholas Kristof, also a well-meaning liberal, but one who actually understands economics and globalization:
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”
. . .
When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

The Neo-Antoinette School of Economics would say "Let the Cambodians have decent-paying (by Western standards) union jobs and let American consumers pay more for their products." But, the higher the prices, the fewer products will be purchased. You can't wave a magic wand and transform a poor country into a rich one with lots of good non-sweatshop jobs overnight. Economic development can be surprisingly rapid, as in the case of China and other Asian economies, but it can't be instant.

For reference: Amy Goodman interviews Michael Pollan

Goodman: Can you talk about corporations in other ways, like Monsanto, talking about the sustainability of genetically modified foods?
Pollan: Yeah, Monsanto is very much on the attack right now, pushing its products, particularly in Africa, and making the case that the most sustainable agriculture will be intensive production on the land base we have. The argument is that there’s only so much arable land in the world, we have ten billion people on the way, and that the only way to feed them is to get more productivity over the land we have, to further intensify agriculture, using their genetically modified seeds.
And the word “sustainable” is never far from their lips. And they have this amazing ad campaign. Two things are notable about it. One is that the language of sustainability and the critique of industrial food is being picked up by some of the major players within industrial food, either as an effort to co-opt the rhetoric or simply confuse the consumer and the citizen.
The other thing is that it’s very interesting that Monsanto should be arguing that it has the key to improving productivity. If indeed what we need to do is improve productivity, don’t look at genetically modified crops. They have never succeeded in raising productivity. That’s not what they do. If you look at the—the Union of Concerned Scientists just issued a report looking at the twenty-year history of these crops, and what they have found is that basically the real gains in yield for American crops, for world crops, has been through conventional breeding. Genetic modification has—with one tiny exception, Bt corn used in years of very high infestation of European corn borers—has not increased productivity at all. That’s not what they’re good at. What they’re good at is creating products that allow farmers to expand their monocultures, because it takes less management. So, if indeed we need to go where Monsanto says, there are better technologies than theirs.

But DNA was only discovered in 1953 and the first commercially available GMO was in the 1990s. The first 20 years of aviation did not produce huge gains in commercial transportation (compared to other modes) either. Steam trains were the big economically relevant transportation technology back then. So even if we accept his spin, this technology is still in its infancy.

Goodman: What about companies boasting that they use real sugar, like that’s a health claim.

Pollan: Well, you know, it’s very interesting. Since this book came out, where I argue don’t buy high-fructose corn syrup and don’t buy products with more than five ingredients, suddenly the industry is—you know, they’re so clever. I have to hand it to them. But now they’re arguing that their products are simpler, and there’s new Haagen-Dazs 5, which is a five-ingredient Haagen-Dazs product. You know, it’s still ice cream. Ice cream is wonderful, but we shouldn’t treat it as health food because it now has only five ingredients. ... Frito-Lay potato chips now is arguing that they’re local. Now, you have to remember, any product is local somewhere. Right? This food doesn’t come from Mars. But to think that Frito-Lay as a local potato chip is really a stretch.
. . .
So, I’ve had to update my rules. And with all this new marketing based on these ideas, my new suggestion is, if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

Those sneaky corporations, they followed his advice!
Better move the goalposts!

Goodman: What about large corporations buying up the farmland of poorer countries?

Pollan: Well, this is going on. There is a growing recognition that the great unrenewable resource is arable soil in this world and that countries like China realize that they will not be able to feed their population on their soil base, because of their numbers, but also because they poison so much of their soil. Their soil is polluted, and they have a serious problem with that. So they are buying up huge swaths of land in Africa.

This is a political disaster, you know, waiting to happen. I mean, Africans are going to stand by while their best farmland is being used to feed Chinese? I mean, I don’t see this as a sustainable solution for anybody. But this is what’s happening.

And we should take note and realize that our farmland is so precious, and we should be very careful about developing it, and we should certainly be careful about letting it run off into the Mississippi River because we’re failing to put in cover crops and things like that.

From an economic perspective, if foreign corporations can make that farmland more productive, it will increase overall food security and bring economic development for the host country. It's actually a win-win. And it's not going to be in the economic interest of the land-owner to ruin that land.

 

[Almo]

Before ragging on Michael Pollan, read his book "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He's really quite reasonable (at least in the book). He recognizes the complexity of the decision to prefer being a "locavore." He doesn't describe things in black-and-white, and seems to be pretty good at looking at a subject from many sides.

 

[stilicho]

There are various schools of economics, such as the Keynesian School, the Chicago School, the Austrian School and the Marxist School. Let me propose a name for another school of economics: The Neo-Antoinette School.
Some axioms of this school:
1) Industrialization is bad.
2) Commercialization is bad.
3) Cheap products are bad.
4) Corporations are bad.
5) Globalization is bad.
6) Locally-grown food is good.

It's one of those odd paradoxes that the benefits of globalisation and technology are the very things that have allowed a flourishing trade in boutique products (Fair Trade coffee, "organic" vegetables, etc) and unsustainable lifestyles (making your own clothes, growing your own food, cycling to work, etc).

I participate in some of these wasteful activities simply because of the wealth of time and income afforded by all the things these writers claim to be bad.

 

[Cavemonster]

It's one of those odd paradoxes that the benefits of globalisation and technology are the very things that have allowed a flourishing trade in boutique products (Fair Trade coffee, "organic" vegetables, etc) and unsustainable lifestyles (making your own clothes, growing your own food, cycling to work, etc).

I participate in some of these wasteful activities simply because of the wealth of time and income afforded by all the things these writers claim to be bad.

In what way is cycling to work unsustainable?
In what way is growing your own food unsustainable? Should I tell the Tibetan villagers that they ought to stop growing their own food?

 

[Francesca R]

Let me propose a name for another school of economics: The Neo-Antoinette School.
Some axioms of this school:
1) Industrialization is bad.
2) Commercialization is bad.
3) Cheap products are bad.
4) Corporations are bad.
5) Globalization is bad.
6) Locally-grown food is good.
Etc.

I don't think this "school" really agrees on 6. Better to shorten the name a bit and call it the Neo-Anti Economic School. A bunch of disparate folks united only in stuff they oppose.

 

[Puppycow]

Before ragging on Michael Pollan, read his book "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He's really quite reasonable (at least in the book). He recognizes the complexity of the decision to prefer being a "locavore." He doesn't describe things in black-and-white, and seems to be pretty good at looking at a subject from many sides.

Before ragging on Sylvia Brown, read her book!

True, I haven't read his book, but I have read some of his articles in the NY Times and listened to the Slate Audio Book Club discuss his book. I'll admit he's he's a smart guy and is not wrong about everything. I just think he gets The Big Picture wrong.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

In what way is cycling to work unsustainable?
In what way is growing your own food unsustainable? Should I tell the Tibetan villagers that they ought to stop growing their own food?

Cycling to work is nice if you can afford it but it limis the distance you can live from your place of employment.

Growing your own food is either a subsistence level way of living or a luxury for those who can afford it to use their spare time to do something they enjoy.

It's a shame when the very people who benefit from specialized work and a sohpistacted economy undermine it by using their wealth of time and money to inefficiently undermine the work of people less well off as though that somehow makes them morally superior.

"I turn up my nose at tomatoes hand picked by migrant laborers. We should all grow our own nd let those poor migrant laborers go back to Chihuahua and starve." Of course no one says that, they'd rather think think that by not buying cheap goods they are somehow helping the people that they are actually harming.

 

[Roboramma]

Cycling to work is nice if you can afford it but it limis the distance you can live from your place of employment.

Is the price of living closer to your place of employment really so high that it makes up for buying a car and paying insurance?

When I lived in canada I cycled to work because a) I enjoyed it and b) I couldn't afford anything else, including taking the bus.
I worked generally in downtown vancouver, and had a couple of roommates, so my rent was around $375/month.

Growing your own food is either a subsistence level way of living or a luxury for those who can afford it to use their spare time to do something they enjoy.

Maybe, but how doesn't that luxury harm anyone? Those people will spend that free time doing something. I don't really see how spending it growing your their own food does anyone any harm.

It's a shame when the very people who benefit from specialized work and a sohpistacted economy undermine it by using their wealth of time and money to inefficiently undermine the work of people less well off as though that somehow makes them morally superior.

It seems to me that we are either all better off when more food is produced, or we aren't. I think the former is true, which is why I agree with the OP that "buy local" is foolish (though the costs of things like global warming certainly skew this to some degree).
But that also suggests that growing your own food has a positive value for society, even if a very slight one.

 

[Cavemonster]

Cycling to work is nice if you can afford it but it limis the distance you can live from your place of employment.

Yes and owning a car or taking public transportation every day limits the jobs you can take because you must turn down all those that don't cover those extra expenses.
Having a job somewhere outside of cycling range is nice, if you can afford it. Either way, it's a trade-off.

Look worldwide at those people who bike to work and you'll find it isn't at all a luxury of the rich. Are these people cycling to work because corporations have made them wealthy?
http://pro.corbis.com/images/BV006879.jpg?size=67&uid=9CCFCC4B-C98C-4286-A9AF-39715990F4A0

In American and European cities and many suburbs, bicycling to work has been common across classes before our contemporary globalization and now. How can globalization allow for it when it has existed all this time?

Growing your own food is either a subsistence level way of living or a luxury for those who can afford it to use their spare time to do something they enjoy.

I have to disagree with you, I've met more than a few people who do just the opposite, grow their own food so that they don't need to spend so much time working crummy jobs. The folks I know who do so are not at all the upper middle class with oodles of leisure time funded by their plush job, but hillbillies, punks and radical fairies.

You're making assumptions about people and the mechanisms that "allow" them to do things that are unfounded and incorrect.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Is the price of living closer to your place of employment really so high that it makes up for buying a car and paying insurance?

So, the typical person has a different job about every two years, and you expect this person to pick up and move to a different home as frequently as that?

I work over 30 miles from school in one direction and 30 miles from my job in the other. You expect me to bicycle to both? I just worked 20 hours yesterday. How much extra sleep am I supposed to lose riding on a bicycle in the pouring rain across Miami's worst neighborhoods in the dead of night?

When I lived in canada I cycled to work because a) I enjoyed it and b) I couldn't afford anything else, including taking the bus.
I worked generally in downtown vancouver, and had a couple of roommates, so my rent was around $375/month.

If you want to deliberately restrict your options for work, feel free. Just don't suggest that anyone else should.

Maybe, but how doesn't that luxury harm anyone? Those people will spend that free time doing something. I don't really see how spending it growing your their own food does anyone any harm.


It seems to me that we are either all better off when more food is produced, or we aren't. I think the former is true, which is why I agree with the OP that "buy local" is foolish (though the costs of things like global warming certainly skew this to some degree).
But that also suggests that growing your own food has a positive value for society, even if a very slight one.

I enjoy gardening. The whole grow local movement, however, has huge consequences. One, it robs us of efficiency. I don't care how avid a gardener you are, you are not as efficent in terms of labor, land, and other resources used as a modern farm. Two, if the history of famines teach us anything is that people who rely on local food sources, as opposed to drawing their food from many different sources in different places, are more likely to starve.

 

[Puppycow]

I think the former is true, which is why I agree with the OP that "buy local" is foolish (though the costs of things like global warming certainly skew this to some degree).

It's not necessarily true that the locally produced product caused less greenhouse gas production. The transportation infrastructure is actually very efficient because of economies of scale. The local farmers each driving a few bushels of produce a few miles to the farmer's market and the local consumers each driving to the same (and all the other places they need to go for all their shopping needs) may possibly add add up to more than if the consumers make one trip to a big box store and buy everything they need, which has been delivered longer distances but more efficiently.

 

[Aepervius]

So, the typical person has a different job about every two years, and you expect this person to pick up and move to a different home as frequently as that?

Firstly I would like to see a stat saying the typical person has a different job every two year. Most people I know have the same job for 5 years. Only a very small subset change that often. But this is anecdotal so what is your statistic ?

Secondly , I just move with my job. you read it. EVERY TIME I had a new job I moved. The reason being that a trip of 50 km (30 miles) by car is NOT sustainable for a good life. Neither it is by train or public transportation. We are speaking here at least a 1h to 1h30 trip (2 to 3h round trip). Just going back and forth to work. IMHO that is crazy to spend 1/8 of your day just going back and forth between two points and worth it to sell your old place and take a new one, even if you have a small loss hit, just to get back that 1/8 of your day (and probably 1/5 of your waking time).

ETA:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/tenure.pdf

Quote : average total is 4 years, and the proportion which has a tenure of more than 10 years is roughly 25%.

 

[Cavemonster]

One, it robs us of efficiency. I don't care how avid a gardener you are, you are not as efficent in terms of labor, land, and other resources used as a modern farm. Two, if the history of famines teach us anything is that people who rely on local food sources, as opposed to drawing their food from many different sources in different places, are more likely to starve.

One: a huge amount of that efficiency is lost in the process after growing. That food needs to be shipped packed for shipping, refrigerated, packaged for consumer brand recognition, advertised, often made into "food products", sold through a middle man supermarket which has it's own advertising and middle management, and then in the end a disturbingly large chunk of that food ends up in landfills. Veggies that don't sell at local farmstands become compost and return their minerals to the soil.

So if you want to talk about efficiency in terms of resources, look at the whole process and how that works out per-vegetable consumed.

Two: There is absolutely no danger of everyone in the world turning into a localvore. The supply chains that bring food from varied distances aren't in any danger of being put out of business. Encouraging local farmers actually increases the variety of food sources available.

In places like Jamaica, cheap, subsidized imported powdered milk has crushed the local dairy industry over the last 30 years. Now they are entirely dependent on imports to meet their country's milk needs. If the cost of imported milk were to go up substantially (due to the end of subsidies, or, a large increase in oil price) they would face a crisis, since the infrastructure cannot be rebuilt in a short timespan.

So globalization and cheap products have weakened their food supply, made it more dependent on factors beyond their control.

Globalization and cheap products aren't always bad, any case needs to be judged on it's own merits.

 

[Cavemonster]

So, the typical person has a different job about every two years, and you expect this person to pick up and move to a different home as frequently as that?

I work over 30 miles from school in one direction and 30 miles from my job in the other. You expect me to bicycle to both? I just worked 20 hours yesterday. How much extra sleep am I supposed to lose riding on a bicycle in the pouring rain across Miami's worst neighborhoods in the dead of night?

How in the world does the fact that bicycling isn't the best fit for everyone in every situation prove that it's a luxury only available due to globalization?

That doesn't follow.

 

[!Kaggen]

~snip~ The whole grow local movement, however, has huge consequences. One, it robs us of efficiency. I don't care how avid a gardener you are, you are not as efficent in terms of labor, land, and other resources used as a modern farm. Two, if the history of famines teach us anything is that people who rely on local food sources, as opposed to drawing their food from many different sources in different places, are more likely to starve.

Apart from being wrong about just about everything perhaps you could explain why this form of local food production is inefficient.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamón_ibérico

Yes soviet agriculture was very modern (machinery,chemicals) and very efficient (large scale)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_agriculture


and post USSR farming in one previous Soviet colony, Uzbekistan, proves the efficiency of small household plots (Dekhans).

"Up to 1991, agriculture in Uzbekistan (then Uzbek SSR), as in all other Soviet republics, was organized in a dual system, in which large-scale collective and state farms coexisted in a symbiotic relationship with quasi-private individual farming on subsidiary household plots. The process of transition to a market economy that began in independent Uzbekistan after 1992 led to the creation of three types of farms: the traditional household plots were renamed dehkan (or dehqon) farms (Uzbek: деҳқон хўжаликлари, Russian: дехканские хозяйства); the large-scale collective and former state farms were reclassified as shirkats (agricultural production cooperatives) or other corporate forms (joint-stock societies, limited liability companies, partnerships); and a new category of midsized peasant farms or “farmers” (Uzbek: фермер хўжаликлари, Russian: фермерские хозяйства) was introduced between the small dehkan farms and the large-scale shirkats.[5] As of 2006, "farmers" cultivate 75% of sown area, while dehkan farms cultivate 12.5% and various corporate farms control the remaining 12.5%. The situation is totally different with regard to livestock: 95% of cows is in dehkan farms, 4% in peasant farms, and just 1% in corporate farms. Dehkan farms produce 62% of gross agricultural output, followed by 32% in peasant farms, and a mere 6% in corporate farms.[2] "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Uzbekistan#Changing_farm_structure

It is revealing that the Dehkan farmers have cows.
Organic farming and cow pooh, get it?

 

[zaphod2016]

Argument: locally grown produce is less efficient than imported food.

Counter-Argument: this depends entirely on the cost of fuel. This also depends entirely on how one defines "local". Here in Florida, I live 30 minutes from orange plantations. Eating non-local oranges would be asinine. Due to the fertility and extended growing seasons of Florida, the prices of local-grown produce at farmer's markets is competitive, oftentimes 5-10% cheaper, than imported produce at the major grocery chains. The quality is also superior, the food is fresher; oftentimes bypassing refrigeration (which dulls the taste of produce considerably).

Attempting to live off the bounty of garden boxes while living in a high rise in NYC would be ridiculous; importing food is the only rational choice. But for those of us living in superior climates, the local-grown movement, and efficient market hypothesis, are not in conflict at all.

 

[Puppycow]

Argument: locally grown produce is less efficient than imported food.

Just to clarify: this is not my position. I'm just against dogmatic opposition to globalization and free trade.

 

[Cavemonster]

Just to clarify: this is not my position. I'm just against dogmatic opposition to globalization and free trade.

I don't think the people you're targeting are quite as dogmatic or as ill informed as Charlotte Allen makes them out to be.

Have you read their books, or are you just going from online information?

I could rebut your individual points about sweatshops (Whether or not the job is desirable to the individual worker isn't a measure of the factory's net effect on the population) or Pollan's goal posts (Reading on he clearly explains that corn syrup is a signifier, a handy shortcut that the advertising as "natural sugar" trend had short circuted), but I don't think you're really familiar with their positions, and that's more important.

I don't agree with either of them on every point, but you seem to be responding to a cariacature of them and people with similar views.

 

[Puppycow]

I don't think the people you're targeting are quite as dogmatic or as ill informed as Charlotte Allen makes them out to be.

Have you read their books, or are you just going from online information?

See post #6. (I've read Op-Eds and the like by these people, but not whole books).

I could rebut your individual points about sweatshops

At least read the Nick Kristof piece linked in the OP first. He makes the argument better than I can.

or Pollan's goal posts (Reading on he clearly explains that corn syrup is a signifier, a handy shortcut that the advertising as "natural sugar" trend had short circuted), but I don't think you're really familiar with their positions, and that's more important.

I don't agree with either of them on every point, but you seem to be responding to a cariacature of them and people with similar views.

Well, perhaps there is something I'm missing. I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Is there some killer point that I'm not aware of?

Here's more from that interview of Michael Pollan:

Goodman: What do you mean, “edible food-like substances”?

Pollan: Well, these are products of food science. These are the stuff in the middle of the supermarket, the stuff that doesn’t go bad for a year, deathless food, immortal food. You have to think, well, what does it mean to say a food has got a shelf life of six months or a year? It means it has been engineered to resist bacteria, pests of all kinds, fungi, mold. And what does that mean? Well, it has no nutritional value for those things. The insects, the bacteria, they’re not interested in the Twinkie, because there’s nothing of nutritional value in it.

This is Pollan's rationale for not eating processed food? Long shelf-lives means that critters won't eat it?
First of all, I think if you removed a twinkie from its packaging and set it on the ground you would find that the critters would actually be quite "interested" in it. It's not that the critters eschew processed food, its that we kill ones in it and seal it off from the rest of them.

Here is more from Ellen Ruppel Shell:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/dialogue_ellen_ruppel_shell.php

But the main focus of CHEAP is not China, or the developing world. Rather, the book is a journey through the science, economics, psychology and social history of low price in America and its formidable impact on our culture. Naturally, until the Industrial Revolution and mass production, no consumer goods were cheap. And until the invention of the price tag in the late 1800s, discounts were not part of the retail landscape. I found it fascinating that Americans have not always been thrilled with "everyday low prices." At the turn of the last century, the Retail Merchants Association railed against discounters, who "reduced the value of labour, and destroyed the purchasing power of many classes, thereby affecting all classes." Shopkeepers who touted low prices were derided as scoundrels and "gutter merchants." President William McKinley was particularly outspoken on this point: "Cheap merchandize," he famously said, "means cheap men." And so it did. Retailing wizard Frank Woolworth's "innovation" was to hire only unskilled workers, mostly young women still living at home, and pay them next to nothing. "It may look hard to some of you for us to pay such small wage but..one thing is certain: we cannot afford to pay good wages and sell goods as we do now, and our clerks ought to know it."

Woolworth, of course, set a pattern that discounters follow today--one third of the working poor in the US come from the retail ranks. The downward pressure on wages is undeniable: despite the nation's astonishing productivity growth, median family income, adjusting for inflation, dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007, while family spending on basics grew by $4,655. So yes, as Megan has helpfully pointed out, many of us are getting health care benefits from our employers. But this benefit is more than swamped by the ballooning cost of health care. Meanwhile, we pay less and less for consumer goods: compared with the early 1970s, 40 percent less on clothes, 20 percent less on food, more than 50 percent less on appliances, about 25 percent less on owning and maintaining a car. Thanks to our flat incomes and growing fixed expenses, many of us don't have the extra cash to pay for all these "great deals," but no matter--until the past couple of years we took the money out of our homes--with cheap, "no money down!" second mortgages. We all know where the story went from there.

I'm trying to figure out what seems to be a contradiction here. She says spending on "basics" grew between 2000 and 2007 while median income fell, but also that "we pay less and less for consumer goods."

So it's not clear to me that our living standards are not getting better if pay less for consumer goods. If your wage is flat but the basket of goods you buy gets cheaper, that increases your standard of living.

 

[Cavemonster]

I'm trying to figure out what seems to be a contradiction here. She says spending on "basics" grew between 2000 and 2007 while median income fell, but also that "we pay less and less for consumer goods."

So it's not clear to me that our living standards are not getting better if pay less for consumer goods. If your wage is flat but the basket of goods you buy gets cheaper, that increases your standard of living.

There are a lot of points you make, so forgive me for only addressing this one, I need to go to bed in a minute, but this one is easy.

Do you live in a low income neighborhood? Are you a trashpicker? Both are true for me. And one thing that's abundantly clear to me, people buy a lot of things, up to furniture and appliances that are cheap, wear out and break quickly.

Individual consumer goods fall in price, but the utility to be had from those goods drops faster.

A chair may have been much more expensive X years ago than one bought at Walmart today, but if it was made of wood and not particle board or poorly assembled plastic, it would easily last a lifetime.

But cruise my neighborhood on any given trash day and you'll find a wealth of busted stuff. Consumers who buy cheap chairs pay less per chair than consumers X years ago, but they pay much more per chair-day, chair-hour whatever unit you want to measure it in.

Your wage is flat, the basket of goods you buy gets cheaper, but those goods have less utility, and the difference in utility is greater than the difference in price.

When your chair that costs half the price of a sturdier one, and has a lifespan of less than half that of the sturdier one, you lose value and end up having to replace it. You also lose the value of your time/gas buying a replacement and we all pay the cost in fuller landfills. You lose productivity and time at home using underperforming appliances.

Now obviously, things like shampoo or food can go down in quality without creating the need for replacement. But what you take on then are direct quality of life hits. There's no denying calories are cheap, but cheap calorie processed foods tend to be high in bad kinds of fats (hence our US obesity problem)

And on top of that we do have some products that offer increased utility at lower prices, some products actually do improve quality of life thanks to technology and low cost labor from Global corporations.

But that has to balance out the shirts from Walmart who's collar falls apart after one wash vs some of my dad's old shirts still looking spiffy after decades.