Buying cheap stuff makes life worse. (Part 2)

A few days back I wrote about the book Cheap : the high cost of discount culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell. She said buying cheap is bad because it lowers income and surrounds us with crappy stuff.

I kept reading the book, hoping she would talk about what else was bad about buying cheap. Well, she said it "dilutes the brand" - which I don't really understand because she didn't explain it well.

She also says it makes consumers "confused" because prices change so much every day. This seems a bit weak to me.

Later she said that low food prices are bad because we become "compliant" and when food prices go up, it causes "social unrest". Um, again this sounds weak. She's not making a good case for not buying cheap stuff.

The last chapter is about China and its notorious sweatshops. Yes, they're bad. They do, however, provide income and hope to the people who live there. Would you rather work in a sweatshop for $1 a day or rummage through a garbage dump?

I imagine that most locals prefer sweatshops.