Local author Gordon Laird.
Gordon Laird on how we’re selling ourselves short
Shopping malls filled with Christmas decorations and apparent bargains with signs screaming Sale ! add to the timeliness of a Calgary author’s new book about the true cost of all those tempting deals.
The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization is bestselling author Gordon Laird’s detailed and engaging chronicle of a world gone a little crazy with the expectation of low price tags. Over breakfast in a Calgary restaurant Laird expands on some of the book’s themes such as North American society’s gradual shift from making things for consumers to doing things for consumers.
“ One of the premises of the book is that for better and for worse we’ve achieved this economy where about 70 per cent is associated with consumer activity. It’s the service economy. That means that the industrial and the agricultural output is about 30 per cent” says Laird.
The significance of that he contends is that we’ve become reliant on people in faraway countries to provide us with what used to be manufactured close to home.
This isn’t news of course but the timing of last year’s sudden economic collapse allowed Laird to freshen up some thoughts that had been percolating in his mind for years since his travels to Asia for earlier writing projects.
“Unlike previous crashes and bubbles today’s challenges aren’t merely the result of market speculation cyclical inflation or political manipulation” he writes. “This time long-term trends figure prominently: depletion of consumer economies erosion of western trade dominance population growth energy nationalism… shoppers are no longer fully insulated from the pitfalls of a world hooked on bargains.”
Laird has established a solid reputation for tackling complex subjects and producing thorough but entertaining books such as Power: Journeys Across an Energy Nation and Slumming it at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada’s Right-Wing Revolution .
In The Price of a Bargain he’s once again an anecdote-rich tour guide.
The first of his behind-the-scenes journeys explaining the world’s bargain addiction is a massive trade show in Las Vegas where contracts are signed non-stop for days on end by chains of dollar stores. Yes dollar stores those little shops seeming run by mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. They are the new Wal-marts and their representatives roam the trade show buying up shipping containers full of trinkets.
Dollar stores might even be recession-proof. Their numbers we’re told quadrupled between 1996 and 2007 and in 2009 posted growth when even chains such as Target suffered diving profits.
Laird’s tour also takes us to middle America to West Edmonton Mall to the high Arctic — where goods are generally priced at realistic (expensive) levels — and of course China.
While some would argue cheap goods are proof that the free enterprise system works Laird shows us how it’s not pure capitalism we’re seeing here. There are hidden subsidies all over the place as emerging nations help finance their industries and manufacturers exploit underpaid labour cheap water carbon and clean air. Laird argues it’s time western nations stopped “decoupling” trade from safety human rights and the environment.
It doesn’t mean we’ll stop seeing cheap shirts from China but the times are indeed changing he says in the interview.
“Trade will continue but we’re already seeing some signs of that changing not the least the kind of demand that consumers are able to sustain. It’s happening on a number of different levels.”
“Sure China can continue to make all of our affordable stuff as will much of Southeast Asia and still be a significant part of our economy but it’s just not necessarily in their interests to do so — to continue to subsidize their economy and put a lot of their resources into keeping exports a major part of their growth.”
“Although they need foreign currency they are far more stable and independent than they were 10 years ago.”
