Word: bargain
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...dawn of the 21st century, America is, if nothing else, the land of the bargain. Big-box stores like Wal-Mart dominate the retail landscape, peddling middling goods at rock-bottom prices. Higher-end stores put their merchandise on sale like clockwork; if you wait a little longer, you can get it even cheaper at a factory outlet. Afterward, you can fill up on all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster for $15 - truly, the American Dream...
...really think 15 bucks can buy? In her new book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, Shell argues that our never-ending pursuit of cheap has blighted our landscape, depressed working wages and (yes) contributed to the global financial meltdown. Shell talked to TIME about the problem with bargain goods, how to stop yourself from buying something you don't need and why Ikea is the least sustainable company on the planet. (See the top 10 worst fast-food meals...
...what's wrong with cheap, in a nutshell? Well, in a nutshell, it comes back to bite us in the ass. It's short-term gratification and long-term pain. Now, I'm a rabid bargain hunter. Ask my kids. When I come back from the store and I have four boxes of cereal, they know that cereal is on sale. I'm what behavioral psychologists call "deal prone." And yet I noticed this wasn't really saving me any money - in fact, it was costing me money. I went and looked at the data and found that since...
Once prohibitively expensive, places such as South Korea and Iceland have been transformed into bargain getaways. The weakening of South Korea's won helped the country attract 7% more tourists last year--a faster rise than that of any other Asian destination--and so far this year, 50% more Japanese tourists have visited. In Iceland, where the krona has fallen sharply, the nation is betting on increased arrivals: this summer Icelandair will open up new routes to nine cities in Europe and North America. And VisitBritain, the official U.K. tourism body, is running a $2.6 million ad campaign urging foreigners...
...environmental author Bill McKibben wrote in a June 11 review in the New York Review of Books, that might be the easy part: "The real negotiation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don't bargain." Facts are facts...