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About a year ago, I bought a brand new pair of Levi’s jeans for $15. The price seemed almost too good to be true. Fifteen years ago, the same jeans would have cost at least $30. Imagine my shock when I perused the Wal-Mart ads this year to discover that a pair of jeans can now be had for $7. That’s not a typo. $7 jeans – along with $29 microwaves, $3 children’s jackets, and $69 digital cameras – should raise alarm bells in the mind of any discriminating consumer.
According to Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect:
"Wal-Mart’s pricing drives a sometimes corrosive phenomenon, one in which Wal-Mart slowly but insistently resets our expectations about what a product should cost, and about what it’s worth. The process often proceeds at a speed not much greater than continental drift – but with the same kind of bulldozing power. Why shouldn’t you be able to buy a cordless electric screwdriver for $9.99?"
And as we grow to expect these absurdly low prices, we also grow to accept much lower quality. We don’t raise an eyebrow when our $149 TV kicks the bucket after three years – even though the one our parents paid $500 for is still going strong after 25 years.
And we don’t mind schlepping back in for another pair of cheap jeans when they wear out in a year or two, even though they used to last 10 or 15 years, sometimes even a lifetime. My new Levi’s already have a hole in the knee, and I only wear them about once a week.
Levi’s, like so many other companies, has been forced to lower the quality of their products because of Wal-Mart’s incessant demand for lower prices, a reality which few consumers seem to grasp. We’ve lost the ability to distingush price and value. As a result, we’ve created a consumer climate where the only factor influencing purchase is what we have to pay at the register. We don’t think twice about the true costs that are not reflected on the price tag – costs to the environment, costs to the human rights of workers, costs to American industries, and costs to ourselves for having to constantly replace low-quality merchandise.
This price/value ignorance is spilling over to the political world. As issues come up for debate in Congress, the 
discussion usually starts and ends with the immediate cost. In fact, the bills themselves become known by their price tag, such as the $900 billion stimulus or the $849 billion health reform bill. As a result, the legislative process – much like the shopping process of the typical consumer - becomes focused on finding the lowest possible price, not on producing the bill that has the overall best value for the people.
In short, because we as a nation have lost sight of what is good value, we are looking at a bunch of cheap solutions to expensive problems. Health care reform might be the best example. A strong single-payer system is like the $30 pair of jeans. It’s long term benefits for the health and economy of the nation would more than make up for the higher initial cost. But what we’re ending up with is a $7 pair of watered-down public options - a pair that won’t last. We’ll be right back at the store in a few years looking for another cheap solution.
If there is such a thing as "too good to be true," then there’s also such a thing as "too cheap to be good." America, enjoy your bargains!
6 Comments
jim, this is one great post, I remember the same thing, very proud of the score I made bying my levies for 25 bucks about thirty years ago
when I saw them at walmart for 15 it broke my heart, are those levi’s that are 7 dollars or another brand?
It’s not just Walmart, although they have lead the race to the bottom. About a year ago, I read somewhere that Walmart was selling brand name products manufactured to a price by cutting quality. 8 months ago, when my microwave went out, I went to Target and bought a Sharp 1000 watt on sale for $89. It is already going out.
The implications for the waste stream are devastating. If every American family has to replace a microwave and a TV every year or so, we are all going to be living in a toxic waste dump.
“Levi’s, like so many other companies, has been forced to lower the quality of their products because of Wal-Mart’s incessant demand for lower prices, a reality which few consumers seem to grasp. We’ve lost the ability to distingush price and value.”
Absolutely correct and it extends to everything in the U.S.
As a result, we’ve created a consumer climate where the only factor influencing purchase is what we have to pay at the register. We don’t think twice about the true costs that are not reflected on the price tag – costs to the environment, costs to the human rights of workers, costs to American industries, and costs to ourselves for having to constantly replace low-quality merchandise.” —YUP!!!
Great diary and recommended.
When I was growing up, the mantra I was taught was ‘waste not, want not’. But times have changed and the new mantra appears to be ‘everything is cheap and replaceable,just spend’. And it rolls over into how we treat each other.
Oscar Wilde:
The
cynicconsumer knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.Excellent post, Jim.
It is absolutely imperative we re-establish our manufacturing base if we’re to survive and I’ve thought for quite some time that we need to start in the clothing industry.
And, to extend the effect of judging everything by cost – evils like outsourcing jobs is always justified by saying no matter the harm to towns abandoned without work and people unnemplyoed and unemployable—the bottom line, someone is always sayhing, is that the price of the product now made in China or India will be lower, which is good for the consumer. And that is all that matters.