The Real Cost of Low Prices

A couple of weeks ago, my best friend sent me an email. She just got this new expensive makeup she'd ordered on the Internet. It had arrived! But then she remembered that story I wrote about a warehouse in Ohio that ships products from online retailers and how miserable everyone who works there is and how shitty they're treated by their employers, and then she felt really sad. So, hey, she said, thanks a lot.

I'm not going to tell her, but now, via the Allentown Morning Call, there's more confirmation that products are often shipped from the Internet to your house by very demoralized workers operating in very depressing conditions because they have no other job options. Specifically, at the Amazon warehouse in the story, an employees got in touch with OSHA when the heat inside hit 102 degrees. Fifteen workers collapsed, and those that went home to beat the heat got negative marks put on their records.

The Ohio warehouse I visited in June was the same kind of benefitless sweat-box. (It also sounds a lot like the sweltering warehouse described to my colleague Josh Harkinson here.) The Pennsylvania warehouse mentioned in the Morning Call article was not actually run by Amazon, just like the warehouse I was in wasn't run by the retailers whose product they shipped; both are staffed by temporary workers from a contract agency. Amazon responded by saying, "The safety and well-being of our associates is our number one priority." Mm, no statement yet on whether they're going to make their contractors treat their employees like human beings. In the meantime, every one of Amazon's millions of customers should write them a really angry letter demanding change. Except we won't. Because then our shipping wouldn't be free.
~ The Real Price of Amazon's Free Shipping by Mac McClelland ~

It pains me to admit that I often make purchasing decisions based on perks like "free shipping." I shop around in town and online looking for the least expensive prices. When you don't have a lot of money from month-to-month, pinching pennies, wherever possible, is mandatory!

In many ways, while a lot of big wigs wring their hands about the sorry state of our economy, I've come to believe strongly that they actually aren't concerned at all. They like the current state of things just as they are!! In fact, they like the current state of the world so much that they are doing everything possible to deepen the crisis for the vast majority.

When millions of people face dire financial straights, we quit thinking about the world around us. Our focus is solely on ourselves -- how will we make it from this month to the next. We look for the lowest prices without ANY concerns for how these low prices impact the workers producing and distributing them. We think to ourselves, "Hey, it's not my problem! Those people should be glad they have a job at all!!"

Put another way, I think the oligarchs relish the fact that, during severe economic downturns, the public develops self-centered callousness. We only care how things in this life impact us and no one else. In essence, we unwittingly adopt the mantra of the corporatist class; we become no better than they are!!

And, since we commit the same sins as they do, we find ourselves in no position to complain. If we do complain, they can point a finger at us and say, "You're no better than we are." Knowing this is true, we sit down and shut up.

That is precisely what they want.