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Cheap
- The High Cost of Discount Culture
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for "to sell"), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post-Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship. The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That's a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics, which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields---history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself---to upend the conventional wisdom.
Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives.
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How did Americans become the most voracious consumers in the world? This exposé unmasks the transformation of a frugal nation into one made up of the world's most notorious spendthrifts. Shell offers a historical perspective that spans the various steps of this transition at all levels of the economy - from department stores to supermarkets. Lorna Raver is an apt narrator for this title because her voice has the mature quality of one who may have seen some of the events she recounts. Her dry tone conveys the sardonic subtext that runs throughout the narrative as it switches between objective and subjective accounts in equal parts. She explains with gusto the growth of the discount market in the U.S.
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The Tycoons
- How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
- By: Charles R. Morris
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The modern American economy was the creation of four men: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. They were the giants of the Gilded Age, a moment of riotous growth that established America as the richest, most inventive, and most productive country on the planet. Acclaimed author Charles R. Morris vividly brings these men and their times to life. The Tycoons tells the incredible story of how these four determined men wrenched the economy into the modern age, inventing a nation of full economic participation that could not have been imagined earlier.
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Good book wrong title
- By Hectoris on 10-06-16
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Citizen Coke
- The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism
- By: Bartow J. Elmore
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Outsourcing and a trim corporate profile enabled Coke to scale up production of a low-price beverage and realize huge profits. But the costs shed by Coke have fallen on the public at large. Coke now uses an annual 79 billion gallons of water, an increasingly precious global resource, and its reliance on corn syrup has helped fuel our obesity crisis. Bartow J. Elmore explores Coke through its ingredients, showing how the company secured massive quantities of coca leaf, caffeine, sugar, and other inputs.
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Highly Recommend
- By Laura on 02-22-20
By: Bartow J. Elmore
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Supercapitalism
- The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the 1970s, and notwithstanding three recessions, the U.S. economy has soared. American capitalism has been a triumph, and it has spread throughout the world. At the same time, argues the former U.S. secretary of labor, Robert B. Reich, the effectiveness of democracy in America has declined. It has grown less responsive to the citizenry, and people are feeling more and more helpless as a result.
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Robert Reich for V.P. (of the U.S.)
- By Horace on 11-07-07
By: Robert B. Reich
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The Meat Racket
- The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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How much do you know about the meat on your dinner plate? Journalist Christopher Leonard spent more than a decade covering the country's biggest meat companies, including four years as the national agribusiness reporter for the Associated Press. Now he delivers the first comprehensive look inside the industrial meat system, exposing how a handful of companies executed an audacious corporate takeover of the nation's meat supply.
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Hits the nail on the head.
- By Anonymous 8888 on 02-04-15
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The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America, Second Edition
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From modest beginnings as a tea shop, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company became the largest retailer in the world. It was a juggernaut, with nearly 16,000 stores. But its explosive growth made it a mortal threat to mom-and-pop grocery stores across the nation. Main Street fought back tooth and nail, leading the Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman administrations to investigate the Great A&P. In a remarkable court case, the government pressed criminal charges against the company for selling food too cheaply - and won.
By: Marc Levinson
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Getting Green Done
- Hard Truths From the Frontlines of Sustainability Revolution
- By: Auden Schendler
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Soccer moms drive Priuses. Sport utility vehicles are going hybrid. Families are using hemp shopping bags. More and more companies are developing "green" buildings. What's more, the business consultants say going green is easy and profitable. In reality, though, many green-leaning businesses, families, and governments are still fiddling with the small stuff while the planet burns. Why?
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Green's Dirty Little Secrets
- By Martin on 07-10-09
By: Auden Schendler
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The Prosperity Paradox
- How Innovation Can Lift Nations out of Poverty
- By: Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, Karen Dillon
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Clayton M. Christensen, the author of such business classics as The Innovator’s Dilemma and the New York Times best-seller How Will You Measure Your Life, and coauthors Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon reveal why so many investments in economic development fail to generate sustainable prosperity and offers a groundbreaking solution for true and lasting change.
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Simplistic, lack of insights
- By D. Cameron on 05-24-21
By: Clayton M. Christensen, and others
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Americana
- A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
- By: Bhu Srinivasan
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Bhu Srinivasan
- Length: 21 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana takes us on a 400-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things - the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking, to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the 21st century.
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Excellent history!
- By L. Maranto on 10-14-17
By: Bhu Srinivasan
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Overdressed
- The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion
- By: Elizabeth L. Cline
- Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to fast fashion chains like H&M now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they've turned clothing into a disposable good.
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Very informative and worth a listen.
- By Suuki on 12-06-18
What listeners say about Cheap
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bridget
- 09-27-11
It changed the way I see the world
I learned more about capitalism, economics, and the environment in this book then I ever learned at school. I just wish more people would read it (or listen to it) and help change the way we live and the world we live in.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ray
- 10-26-11
Interesting, but Poorly Written
The subject of craftsmanship, and the loss of value in modern society is something of a candy stick for me, and so I did finish this book, and I did find it very interesting. If you liked Matthew Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soulcraft” and any of Richard Sennett’s work, you will like this book despite it’s glaring flaws of factual accuracy.
Unfortunately however, from the beginning the author displays a subtly disingenuous nature by letting the reader know that, she too has to deal with a wobbly budget, and thus she buys her underwear at Target. Of course I have no idea as to Ms. Shell’s actual net worth but a professor of journalism, and a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly with five book titles to her credit is not juggling the same budget constraints as the average American. That is intellectually dishonest, and in very poor taste to be that condescending.
At first I was making notes of all of the factual inaccuracies, but I gave up after the first few chapters as it was becoming tedious. Her factual inconsistencies go well beyond just being overly opinionated, but she just gets things very wrong. On the Great Depression, on deflation, she got Gresham’s Law so completely wrong I have to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was being honest, but just doesn’t know. Really, the thing is so full of errors I am almost embarrassed for the woman. However, since she thinks buying fake Rolex watches from street vendors somehow makes her one of the common folk, I don’t think it’s likely that she’s in touch enough with reality to feel appropriately chagrined.
Also, the difference between empty consumerism and genuine thrift is too often mixed up by Ms. Shell. What could have been spelled out better is the difference between someone who would gladly pay $150 for an American made floor jack, but has to go with the $80 Chinese version since the next closest thing that isn’t made in China is over $500. The lack of a middle ground in such cases is touched upon, but then she leaves it and rambles on to another opinion based on faulty facts.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joshua Kim
- 06-10-12
A Perfect Companion to Free
Cheap is the perfect companion to Free. Or maybe the antidote to Free. Where Anderson sees a bright future for free, Ruppel Shell reminds us of the high cost of cheap. These costs range from the loss of decent paying jobs for producers to the environmental damage that allows cheap furniture, food, and manufacturing goods to come to market. We probably didn't need one more book on the dangers of the cheap industrial food complex, but Ruppel Shell puts trends in food in the larger context of the migration away from quality across the consumer basket. The chapter on Ikea alone is worth the price of admission.
My only quibble is that perhaps the author over-sold her case.
We have realized some benefits from the cost of some things dropping, from computers to bandwidth (see Anderson), her case would have been strengthened by an exploration of cheap done right. Still, this Free and Cheap should be read together, the first book getting us drunk on the limitless future and the second book sobering us up on the high costs that we are all paying.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Roy
- 07-26-09
You Get What You Pay For?
Ellen Shell in "Cheap" sets out to make sense of the discount culture that characterizes our economy. She accomplishes this with hardly a mention of WalMart! She relates how the discount economy has allowed us to eat shrimp in abundance (Red Lobster) and to purchase poorly built furniture from IKEA. She argues that we are trading low price for quality and that those low prices are not without "costs" to the environment and poor workers elsewhere. Her history of discount shopping is most informative and brings back names such as Woolworths and others long gone.
Some of the material will be familiar to those who follow economics and business. However, there are surprises at every turn and disturbing issues that she raises. She hits the reader early and often with the understanding that we are quickly replacing quality goods with shoddy merchandise and our lives are less for the trade.
I would suggest that this book be preceded or followed by Chris Anderson's "Free" which deals with technology driving the costs of some services to zero. Both Free and Cheap are well written and read. They are both disturbing and informative.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Bridgette Long
- 03-17-20
Poor analysis and poorly supported arguments.
Written to support her own personal conclusions. Out of touch with the whole picture of retail reality. Don’t waste your time.
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- KS
- 12-26-09
Promising concept but disappointing execution
I was excited to listen to this book, but I found as it went on that entire chapters were based on research from other, very popular books I've already read over the past years. Then I felt that much of the content was more politicized than I care for in books having to do with research and behavior. In books like this, I'm looking for fresh information, not repetition and politics. At 2/3 of the way through, I'm moving on to something else. If you're inclined to politics and haven't read "Predictably Irrational," you may enjoy it more than I did. Then again, you may enjoy "Predictably Irrational."
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4 people found this helpful
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- Manuel
- 04-21-16
Ideology in search of data
After reading books by Ariely, Kahneman, and Silver, all which present their arguments completely based on peer reviewed research or objective data, it can be hard to read books lacking the same discipline. Ruppel Shell puts forth an ideology at times supported by fact and data, but mostly based on opinion and extrapolations. There are some interesting historical anecdotes that offer insight into the evolution of retail, though sadly these are also overshadowed by the author's foregone conclusions.
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