The Cost of Living

Why do Americans always want the absolutely cheapest item we can purchase? This obviously applies to traditional Black Friday practices, where we are so motivated by falling prices that we forget about our common humanity and harm others. At least in Black Friday's case, we have been fooled by consistently higher prices the rest of the year that we are actually getting more bang for our buck, a high quality product at a lower price. Black Friday is about value. I'm fine with Black Friday. Though I rarely accompany them, my family heads out every year to grab a few deals, and my brother's big screen plasma TV is a shining example of how he got a high quality product at a great price. Those who know me well would attest to my own love of deals. I shop Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx with great relish and return home with leather driving gloves and cashmere sweaters that I paid next to nothing for. Still, here I am purchasing a relatively luxurious item for a discount. I could pay the same price for synthetic material gloves at Wal*Mart, but would never do so because I know that those gloves will not last as long or please me as much.

No, friends, my problem is with those who will pay the lowest price and sacrifice all quality just to save money. Wal*Mart's current tag line is "Save More. Live Better." At first, as a poor college student, I thought it was genius. I could buy cheap things at Wal*Mart where quality was less relevant (in the case of light bulbs, pencils, and dorm room decor), and I would have more money left over to improve the quality of other consumer goods in my life. I was happy with my lot. I noticed, however, that some of my fellow starving students would buy other goods at Wal*Mart where quality seemed more important. Cheap produce was abundant in our SuperWal*Mart, but I still remember the day when my roommate peeled the orange she had just purchased and found the inside covered in mold. Food is essential to the quality of our lives, both in terms of the pleasure found in eating a delicious meal and in the long-term health of our bodies. Food is also kind of like wedding photography. You get what you pay for. You can hire a cheap photographer, but unless your freshman art major roommate is doing you a favor and taking your pics, the important moments won't be captured and your face will look a little fuzzy. The differences are not very distinct with packaged foods. Obviously, if you buy a name brand box of cereal at Lund's, there wouldn't be a difference between the actual product if you bought it at Wal*Mart instead, but in terms of the whole foods that are the best tasting and most healthful anyway, $4 strawberries at Lund's will always be far better than the $2.50 container at Target. Don't even get me started about Aldi. Yes, despite the occasional ecoli outbreak, our food system is actually extremely secure in terms of bacterial contamination. Nevertheless, all food is not created equal. Just as no one can argue that a BMW is equal to a Hyundai in quality, Aldi's food, processed or whole, is not the same as what you could purchase at your local farmer's market. And so I return to my original question. Who decided that food, our lifeblood, the subject that occupied the whole of human life for our first 10,000 years of existence, should be relegated to the bottom of our priority list? How can something absolutely essential to our well-being take the back seat to Blackberries and Nintendo Wiis?