Cheaponomics
By Raj on 02/5/2010 in Uncategorized, featuredA top ten list of things that aren’t as cheap as you think.
#10 Bottled Water – Bottled water sounds like it should be cheaper – it’s 200 to 10,000 times more expensive than tap water. But in the US, the annual energy wasted on bottled water adds the equivalent to 100,000 cars on roads and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And the price we pay for water doesn’t begin to address the longer term issues of global shortage for something that everyone needs to survive. Make a start: stop your local government from wasting your money on bottled water, as we did in San Francisco.
#9 Cellphones – We’ve all got them. The trouble is that one of the minerals inside our high tech toys – coltan – is bought very dear indeed. With around three quarters of the world’s reserves of coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo, our demand for gadgets fuels bloody conflict and vast human suffering. The No Blood on My Cellphone campaign shows how we can stop it.
#8 Double cheeseburger – A value meal is a great way to eat if you’ve neither time nor money but this cheap food turns out to be ‘cheat food’. What if we had to pay the full environmental, labour and health costs of a burger? Some researchers think we’d end up paying over $200, and that doesn’t include the modern day slavery in our North American sandwiches.
#7 Fish fingers – The world’s oceans are being emptied. When I was a kid, our fish fingers were made of cod. Now the species is commercially extinct, and we’re within a generation of killing everything in the seas. Yet the price of fish is still just a few dollars a kilo.
#6 A Free Lunch - Rudyard Kipling came across the free lunch in the nineteenth century in San Francisco, where he “paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt.” But the freebie ends up being a way to reel you in to consume more. And, yes, my own book is being sold this way too, with a free chapter and video . There’s no moral high-ground for me – I’m a moral low-ground sort of person. But that doesn’t stop me from encouraging folk to get the book from a library.
#5 Googling – Would it shock you to know that two Google searches produces the equivalent greenhouse gases of making a cup of tea. The London Telegraph reported this last year , and while Google denies it, it’s certainly true that global information technology is responsible for 2% of all greenhouse gases.
#4 Toxic waste – Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, was once a senior economist at the World Bank. When he was there, he wrote in a confidential but since widely cited memo that “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]?” He argued that poor people valued a clean environment less than the rich, and so pollution should flow to them. And it has, with rich countries dumping their pollution on poor ones, undervaluing their lives and the damage it causes.
#3 Low income jobs. Part of the reason that food and energy are cheap is so that working peoples’ wage demands are kept in check. In Canada, average real wages have increased by just 1% in two decades – and in the US similar long term trends for working class people (and severe declines in the value of minimum wages.)
But around the world, minimum wages fall far below what families need to survive.
#2 Gas – The way we live to day depends on our not paying the full costs of fossil fuel – with thousands already dying and many billions being lost right now. While figures of $65 trillion a year for the real cost of fossil fuel are almost certainly wrong, with 300 million people affected, it’s already a disaster. We need to bring our governments to heel if we’re to leave a world worth living in to our children.
#1 Women’s work – The world wouldn’t turn without the work of raising children, and caring for family and community. But it’s the work that is most often and quite literally taken for granted. If the work that women did were to be paid, how much would it cost? Researchers put it at $11 trillion in 1995, or half the world’s total output. Movements demanding a basic income grant are laying the foundations for this new way of working and living. Valuing women’s work would, more than any other single thing, transform the way we think about our economy and society.
Update
Here are some other links from groups involved in coltan, toxic waste, and food. Feel free to suggest others in comments.
Another update
David Roberts at Grist has a fine response to this list. I omitted coal from the list simply because energy (coal, nuclear, natural gas, agrofuels,e tc) is hugely underpriced and the entire list might have been filled only with those examples, but David’s quite right to point out the real cost of coal. More here.
Yet another update
Advertising!
And a list of things that are not as valuable as their price tag would indicate: Medicines (certain types at least), Attorneys, Fund Managers, Taxes and the book Value for Nothing
I painfully sat through Larry Summers being interviewed by Charlie Rose at Davos last week. This man is so in love with his own intellect, I don’t think he’s able to see too far beyond it.
Could Raj Patel be the reincarnation of Lenin?
Joking aside, social and economic ills seem too many to try and patch them up. Some new and radical system to exchange goods and services needs to be introduced (instead of free markets)and everything else will fall into place.
Very good post. I do agree that the price of these items do not include the environmental impact, and I don’t think you will find anyone that disagrees with you, but the question is how to incorporate it into the final price? As of now, it’s nearly impossible without seriously screwing with the markets. My suggestions to our politicians is to keep inflation low and stable regardless of the economy. High and unstable inflation hurts lower and middle-income families the most.
Stephen -
Good points, but Raj Patel would argue, I believe — and I would agree with him if he did! — that something more fundamental is needed than managing the markets to control inflation. When the source of one’s sustenance is at the mercy of politicians or other so-called higher-ups managing markets, something is very wrong, indeed!
Food sovereignty is about such power being in the hands of the people themselves. Food is not a commodity, it is a basic right — and we’ve gotten so far away from this commonsense notion that we’ve lost sight of it.
Cheers!
I am very much behind you in most of your “Cheaponomics” statements, but find your statement concerning “womens’ work” beyond offensive. Oh, yes, please, just pay me for my life of drudgery instead of requiring that husbands/companions and fathers share in this work. Instead,shouldn’t the suggestion be to eradicate this scourge of the women of this world, the out-dated patriarchal society that still thrives world-wide today, even in such “enlightened” countries as my own U.S.?
You’re right, Victoria – I think we need a three part approach (and I learned this from Diane Elson, one of the feminist economists whose ideas shaped The Value of Nothing). When it comes to domestic labour, we need to Recognise, Redistribute and Reduce. Recognise means to appreciate that the labour is actually taking place, and is an ongoing subsidy to capitalism. There’s a bit of a debate around whether paying for domestic labour defeats the purpose – but that’s why I think something like a basic income grant is good – it severs the link between work and income, and moves us to a new way of thinking about how we earn and pay for things. The second part is Redistribute: domestic labour needs, actively, to be redistributed away from women so that it is equitably shared. And finally, the work needs to be reduced insofar as we can come up with ways and technologies for reducing the amount of work that has to be done in the first place. I’ll write about this more in the future, but I’ve got to go make breakfast for my family!
And another thing… who will pay for the anti-depressants I will have to take now after reading of all this wrechedness?
I always wanted to be a pessimist anyway and now I have a reason.
Great article, important information. Another item that could be on the list is PAPER! We touch it all day long, often in disposable products that we use for just seconds, because its so “cheap.” We hardly think about it, its so routine and pervasive. If we did think about it, there’s so much opportunity to reduce our use.
But how could it really be that “cheap?” Of course its not, the costs are externalized on future generations. Learn more at http://www.whatsinyourpaper.com.
and thanks!
There is a simple idea available ( http://www.fairtax.com ). It’s a sales tax to replace all income taxes in the U.S.
There’s a prebate for expenses of the poor buying necessities.
It is initially introduced as ‘revenue neutral’, at around 23%.
I think it needs to be doubled to become a real Consumption Tax, and the prebate should be raised to become your “basic income grant”.
Simple. We buy stuff, and that demands more government programs to protect our stuff and our demand for stuff.
The failure mode is that people might stop buying stuff and start living locally and bartering to avoid paying the tax.
Win, win.
The immediate problem is that it is proposed mostly by Republicans and the Democrats can’t see the beauty of it through the simplicity.
Whoever thinks lawyers are overly expensive never truly needed one.
Good list though.
Check out the Hillside Farmers Cooperative:
http://shareable.net/blog/the-hillside-farmers-cooperative
It’s an inspiring model of common sense, or “commons sense”. “The idea for the Hillside Farmers Cooperative was born when Haslett-Marroquin realized that many people around Northfield were unable to find or afford healthy, local food at the same time as new immigrants lacked the financial means to capitalize on their experience as sustainable small farmers. Even some farm owners were frustrated that their only chance for staying in business was to subcontract with large agribusiness corporations that did not respect the land or the agrarian traditions that had been part of their families for generations.”
On #9: No, we don’t all have them.
hey ya’ll, you pay for what ya get, if you don’t need it then you don’t have to pay for it! Remember, ya can shop around or try to do it yourself!
Fish is just a few dollars a kilo there. Increase the price of fish there and we will be left with no fish to eat in India. Everything caught here will be exported to the USA.
When you increase prices for fish please also reform the currency rates to make one INR = one USD.
Thank you for your work, Raj.
I want to add the following to the bottled water issue:
it is often said, that tap water contains residues from pharmaceuticals – which bottled water doesn’t. Have you got any information on this topic?
In response to Tom – tap water contains chlorine to ensure that the water is still bacteria free by the time it comes out of your tap and into your glass. It might make the water taste a bit different but it’s not a health hazard.
My question is I clicked on the link for the No Blood on My Cellphone campaign and found no usable information – and by that I mean what can I do? If I need to get a cellphone where do I get it? What company? Do we have options in the US to get an “ethical” phone?
oh oops, I just realised what Tom asked was about pharmaceuticals and not chemicals, from what I know bottled water is just as likely to contain pharmaceuticals as tap water. The sources of the 2 are the same and I don’t think bottling facilities undertake any special removal processes.
As long as tap water is being poisoned with fluoride, I will drink bottled water whenever I can afford it.
Also, this whining and frearmongering over greenhouse gasses is ridiculous. Nobody believes in manmade climate change and those evil greenhouse gasses anymore.
I understand that all these informations should have an alarming effect and should arouse consciousness of the responsibility that we all have for each other and for the nature which is entrusted to us.
But I also see a depressing and overwhelming effect. (See also comment from Jeff, Feb 9.) It seems to be totally impossible to live on this planet without getting guilty about anyone (or anything). One finally gets the impression that one is already guilty by just existing. Anybody could always be accused of something. After all, what about all the things we unconsciously do wrong?
A total change of global economy away from capitalism to a world of fair sharing sounds quite paradisiac. But even in the face of global crisis I can’t imagine this could be practically realisable in a worldwide way without lawful regularisations (which immediately would annihilate the paradisiac touch).
I believe we need a total change of our hearts.
In my experience, human hearts can be changed by nothing but Jesus Christ.
(And that’s the good news: They really can be changed!)
Nevertheless, we’ll rely on God’s mercy and forgiveness as long as we live on earth.
(Speaking of it: Sorry for any language mistakes, I’m from Germany.)
I’m so glad my company doesn’t advertise