Comments on: Ellen Ruppel Shell’s CHEAP — Part Two

By: Ken Ken

Ken Ken — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:49:49 +0000

As someone that lives in Asia I find many parts of the book not true. Do not know where she got all her info but maybe she should recheck the facts or lack of. Think there will be actions taken against her!!!

By: Ellen Ruppel Shell’s CHEAP — Part One : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:11:46 +0000

[...] of Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Other installments: Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part [...]

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:25:28 +0000

Wow! This is a great debate.

I haven’t read the book, but found your dialog more useful than any review.

I recently told the story of our global economy from the perspective of the garment workers: putting the cheap in your clothes since 1900. I visited Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, and Honduras. I can’t help but wonder that Shell takes too simplistic of a look at the importance of these jobs. In Bangladesh and Cambodia the garment industry accounts for 3/4ths of their exports. If we stop buying cheap stuff, they stop working. Sure, the workers could and should be treated better, but if you ask them if they want Americans to buy the products they produce they don’t hesitate to answer that they do.

All I’m saying is that none of this is a black and white issue. I hope Shell doesn’t paint it as one.

Looking forward to reading more of your debate.

Kelsey Timmerman
Author of “Where Am I Wearing?”

By: Ellen Ruppel Shell’s CHEAP — Part Five : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:40:58 +0000

[...] of Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Other installments: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part [...]

By: Ellen Ruppel Shell’s CHEAP — Part Four : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:18:39 +0000

[...] of Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Other installments: Part One, Part Two, and Part [...]

By: Steven Augustine

Steven Augustine — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:01:28 +0000

1. I meant Kathleen but wrote “Martha” (obviously a demented corruption of “Maher”)

2. I once, between stays in Europe (and to finance the next flight), painted a So Cal villa owned by a fellow worth about 50 mill (in 1996 dollars)… we’re talking a tennis court, a private stable, his and her Lexi… the works… and what did I find in his kitchen cabinets? Enough boxes of Kraft macaroni & cheese, and cans of Pepsi, to sit out the coming Apocalypse: the food in *my* larder was much, much tonier.

By: Steven Augustine

Steven Augustine — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:50:34 +0000

Interesting discussion about perceptions of “class” and “value” via the painted lens of “taste”. Writing as a cultural elitist who spent his childhood in a notorious ghetto, his puberty in a white, middle class enclave and who ended up eschewing his HS graduation present (a brand new Ford Granada with bicycle-spoke hubcaps and red-leather interior; drove it exactly twice and reverted to foot) prior to quitting one of the country’s most expensive private colleges and thereafter happily earning a living, for the next twenty years, as a house painter (while writing fiction and composing music for my own pleasure in the evenings)… I can’t help thinking that we need a new vocabulary to discuss these matters more fruitfully.

The finger-pointing and pissing contests (and stampedes away from the radioactive word “elitist”) are draining energy from the real questions, eg: what is real?

I like what Birnbaum says, but I agree with Levi on the specific matter of Ikea (some of those items are engineering marvels; hats off to pragmatic Northern European ingenuity) and the near-zen-spirituality of holding function-value over status-value; I’ve painted bubble-bought condos as a living cautionary tale for the wide-eyed children of the clients (I liked to disorient them by speaking German, or quoting Joyce or correctly identifying the Satie junior was pecking out in preparation for a recital) but I’m with Martha on the sincerity of near-allergic aversions to horde-pleasures like Super Bowls and fireworks and movies in the style of Titanic.

The truth about “class” is like the truth about “race”: there is either no such measurable thing, or there are thousands of degrees of shading and sub-group almost impossible to collate. We all agree to talk in terms of the Accepted Myth because it’s easier… until we really *talk* about it. Then we get what we got in the thread above (or in any thread about race).