We want our stuff cheap, whatever the cost!

I’ll admit that I already had the proverbial bee in my bonnet. On Sunday The Herald had a “Comparing the cost of groceries” article. It asked, “Where’s the cheapest place to buy groceries in Snohomish County?” So why did that question set me off? Here’s why.

There are, of course, many

reasons that an item may be less expensive. Sometimes, for example, something hasn’t sold and it’s reaching its “pull date,” so the price is cut to get it off the shelf. Sometimes an item has been discontinued, and to open up the shelves for a new item, the price of the old one is cut.

But these are not the most common ways of getting the price down. The most common are: 1) controlling the market in such a way as you can brow-beat the producers of an item into selling it to you for so little they barely make a profit and/or 2) paying your employees less than your competitors and “passing the savings” on to the customer.

As a minister, and as a member of the human family, I get pretty worked up over our current culture of demanding “cheap — whatever the cost might be to anyone else.” Our fixation remains on ourselves, and not how our decisions may impact others.

I found the comparison of grocery stores lacking because not included in the “comparison” were questions like: What do the stores pay their employees? How much do the stores contribute to their employees’ health benefits? Has the store upgraded to be a better neighbor (for example, less polluting)?

Beyond the stores, there are the products themselves. One example is chocolate. Most people are still unaware that roughly half of the chocolate we consume comes from child/slave labor. The cheaper the chocolate, the more likely it has come from slave labor. Every time we buy cheap chocolate we are helping to subsidize slave labor. So, at what cost “cheap?”

As one who believes strongly that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, I think that often the price of “cheap” is often just too high.

Which leads me to today. I need a new and accurate thermometer. I went to one store. But all of their thermometers, expensive and cheap, were made in China. I do my utmost to avoid items made in China, so I drove to my pharmacy. But there too, all of the thermometers were made in China.

You might ask yourself, why is it so much cheaper to manufacture something in China and then ship it all the way to the U.S.? One answer, of course, is labor costs.

In the U.S., we actually have a minimum wage. We actually demand that workers get what is in the U.S. a livable salary. And we also demand that factories don’t pollute.

I understand that there are those whose answer would be to let our factories pollute, and allow companies to pay their workers substandard, sweat-shop wages. That is, indeed, one way to get things cheap.

But that’s my point. I believe the price of that kind of cheap is much too high. I won’t pay it. It’s a matter of values.

Rev. Steven Greenebaum is the pastor at Living Interfaith Church in Lynnwood (www.LivingInterfaith.org).