The Virtue of Not Buying

By Karen Sternheimer

When I get the Sunday paper, the first thing I like to look at are the ad circulars. I love looking at the electronic items I might want someday and getting a sense of how much these things cost. I love a bargain and feeling like I got the best price, even if it means buying something that is last year’s hot item.

This being the holiday season, there are tons of circulars with gift ideas to help us decide what to buy for others. I can’t help but notice that lots of these items are pretty junky, and are presumably things we would never buy for ourselves. These cheap cologne sets, kitchy plant holders, and old DVDs are meant for other people, and the ads highlight how little they cost—typically between $5-$10, if not less.

I once knew someone who felt like she needed to get every last friend and acquaintance a gift. Each year, she would get me one of these bargain items, since her budget was pretty tight. It made me ponder the greater sociological meaning of these items (yes, we sociologists can think about the sociological implications of just about anything).

On a personal level, I had to feign excitement about an item I had no use for. I was grateful for the thought, but as a casual acquaintance she hadn’t made my gift list and I felt a bit guilty to receive something without giving.

I also had no idea what to do with the new object I had received. I could never regift the items, since that would simply pass the problem along to someone else, and I hated to throw stuff away. (I later donated the items to charity. My guess is they threw them away.)

This example may seem like a simple and frankly minor inconvenience that people face; after all, we should all be so burdened to make someone’s holiday gift list, right? Journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, argues that super-low prices have serious economic and environmental costs that we might not think about when buying throwaway gifts for people on the nether regions of our gift lists.

For one, these cheap goods are typically imported from developing nations where people work in sweatshop conditions for virtually no money. These goods are often made in countries that have the most lax labor and environmental laws, frequently keep workers in extreme poverty, all while polluting the area. The items then have to be shipped halfway around the world, with significant environmental costs. Because this process is inexpensive for manufacturers, American workers’ wages remain low or jobs could be shipped overseas, all so we can have really cheap goods. Shell argues that in the end this cheap stuff costs us quite a bit. (Click here to watch Ellen Ruppel Shell speak about Cheap).

University of Pennsylvania Economist Joel Waldfogel suggests the whole shopping process itself is a waste of time and money. In Scroogenomics: Why We Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays, Waldfogel compares what buyers spend with the value that receivers attribute to a gift and estimates that the difference is upwards of $13 billion. (Click here to watch Joel Waldfogel talk about Scroogenomics). He notes that cash and gift cards can be a much more efficient transfer of wealth, and yet as he told the Wall Street Journal, “cash is in general a stigmatized gift.” When we give cash or a gift card, the recipient knows exactly how much—or how little we spent. Buying an item makes us feel like we can mask the dollar amount we spent.

I’m guessing that some of you are reading this and thinking, hey, I like getting and giving gifts! I have friends who love to shop, no matter why, when, and where, so the holidays are really fun for them especially. As I have previously blogged, consumption can be enjoyable and it is almost impossible to avoid being a consumer in our post-industrial society. But as Ellen Ruppel Shell concludes, we can become more conscious consumers. We might think about where the items we buy came from and the conditions under which they were produced. We can also think about our own financial situations and assess what we can truly afford to spend…and think about giving in ways other than just buying something.

Comments

[Allie]

http://www.revbilly.com/

[Mike]

I think that your discussion of the gift giving issue is interesting and that is a problem that we indeed as a society should look into, but I personally have a hard time accepting the message of the youtube video that buying cheap is bad. Intuitively and economically, it makes a lot of sense to by cheap, that's what I do when I have to purchase just about anything, find it for the lowest price.

The video runs into some problems because it is an appeal to emotions rather than reason, There is a poorly rationalized path from spending less money to hurting the environment and keeping poor countries impoverished with sweat-shop labor. Such an advertisement can be as much a ploy to drum up business for higher-priced domestically manufactured products and companies like American Apparel as it is a thoughtful critic of consumer culture.

One important distinction to make is that when most americans seek deals, cheaper prices are derived from shifts in style and their alteration in the demand side of economics. The supply remains constant. The price of an item from last year's line of clothing does not go down because a worker is being paid less.

Discounts of interest are also on the very same item instead of similar substitutes, so buying a shirt for a dollar cheaper and one retail establishment than another is not a decision than an ethically concerned consumer should worry about.

Many discount retailers can charge the prices that they do because they have been able to cut costs through buying in bulk. Large discount stores are able to cut transportation and distribution costs through more efficient networks and infrastructure and more effective management, passing down these cut costs to consumers in the form of lower prices and the positive externality of less resource consumption and carbon emission.

Whether I myself believe these things to be true is still in question, but the point is we should not take such blanket statements that discount shopping is bad. I certainly believe that contributes to ramped consumerism and the holiday shopping problem, but whether it is really evil some make it out to be is questionable.

Think it through, apply some substantive rationality to your life, and have a great holiday!

[sammie]

Buying presents during the holiday season can be stressful. One never knows who is gonna be giving you something and what to get. When we are shopping, i agree, we put to much in on things that dont matter.

[Asha]

I hate holiday shopping...the obligatory fog that hovers over the month of December really irks me. Each year I become more and more aware of my frustration with the pressure that comes with Christmas shopping. It's ironic that the "season of giving" lends itself so well to making us feel rotten: we feel inadequate if we don't have a lot of money to spend on presents; we feel guilty for receiving gifts from people when we're not prepared to reciprocate; we drive ourselves mad looking for parking spots at the mall; and after it's all over, we beat ourselves up for spending more than we could afford.

Perhaps I'm being a bit extreme, but it seems to me that Christmas can really suck the sincerity and joy out of gift giving (and receiving, for that matter). Why should it be that we suddenly feel the need to express our love for friends and family (by giving presents) all at once, just because the calendar says it's time? Why should we suddenly be so concerned about children who "don't have presents under their trees" when we couldn't care less about children living in poverty during the rest of the year? Personally, I'd rather receive a thoughtful card in July than any present in December if it meant that it was given out of genuine desire rather than obligation. And it's not a bad idea to think twice about buying those cheap imported goods we love, because I'd bet that the children who made them are about as far away as one could get from ever having presents under the tree...

[Kathleen]

I quit buying Christmas presents after 2001 without a regret or a backward glance. I had been scaling down. It saves a lot of brain damage. Now that my stepson and his wife are married with three kids, the two older hers from before I won't "get into that rat race" as I told my husband and he must have told her. She has an attitude now. Tough.

And I don't buy birthday presents or attend the parties because childrens' birthday parties give me hives. They are fine for children. Last year she said, "you can make an appearance!" I just looked at her.