Salon.Com has a review of a book I will have to get when the library gets it in. It is on order now: "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," by Ellen Ruppel Shell. I can't do the review justice so I will let you go to the horse's mouth. I will say that for several years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with our mass consumption culture. We talk about an obesity epidemic but don't connect it to the 2 burgers for $3 offers at McDonalds. Take a good look at the section on how cheap labor overseas has pushed the American worker to the brink here. Also think about the fact the only allegiance "our" companies owe is to the bottom line not to their workers or their communities or their country. At the end of the piece the author noted a positive example Shell ends her book with. Unfortunately, that is the exception and not the rule.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Good Morning, Everyone. Well, the weather people last night were a bit off on the forecast so far. Or, I should say some of them were. They were expecting overcast and cool. We have sun and cool. Yeah, Kay, this weather does make you wonder about 'global warming.' However, as the climatologists say--weather isn't climate. Also, just look down south at the heat there. Absolutely brutal. We went to our local building supply store yesterday and, as we were checking out, I grumbled that I really did not like having to put on a sweater only to have to take it off again. The man just in front of me remarked that I must not have gotten used to Indiana weather yet. I told him I had grown up here and didn't remember weather this strange. Ah, he remarked, you were younger then and it didn't have as much of an effect. Yeah, I told him, 50 years does make a bit of a difference. We all got a laugh out of that.
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* gotta get that book at the library, too. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I call Wal-Mart The Evil Empire and I avoid shopping there. I grew up in a house where 'cheap' or 'chintzy' were evil words. We weren't rich by any means, blue collar working class family, but my frugal mother was an inveterate bargain hunter who believed in quality and often spent a bit more for it. She also sewed a lot. It bothers me that we can no longer can find clothes with the ILGWU label. I remember when "Made in Japan" was almost a cuss word. Now try to buy electronics that aren't! It's a travesty what this world has become.
How do we fix it? I don't know but I think my hero, Molly Ivins, made a great suggestion when she said, "What you need is sustained outrage ... there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.”
Thanks for jump-starting my blood pressure! LOL
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