How did the price of tube socks make you question the high cost of discount culture?
A. I was buying tube socks for my kids at a discount store, and it just freaked me out that I could get three pairs of tube socks from China for $5. What does it mean when making fibers, producing socks with them, shipping the socks all the way from China, and then putting them out on the store floor-where the store space costs money and the employees checking you out at the register need to be paid-adds up to $5 for three pairs? How could these prices be so very, very low? Q. Isn’t cheap good? A. Well, no one wants to pay more money. I mean, I’m the biggest cheapskate that walked the earth. When I say that I adore getting free parking, I mean it! But I realized I was making a mistake by cruising for half an hour to find free parking. I was wasting gas and wasting my time. We really devalue our time. Marketers count on the fact that we’ll devalue our time. Consider how long you spend driving to a discount store-which in the case of places like IKEA is an average of 50 miles. And then a
