Last week I stopped in at one of my favorite cheap chain stores, the kind where nothing is over one dollar. I try to keep my purchases there to a minimum, but when I need a little freehanded spending, the kind that makes me feel like I really do belong in American society, it’s the place to go. That’s where I find the little luxuries that add spice to my life without making it impossible to pay my water bill.
One of the things I brought home
from that little splurge was a jar of raspberry jam. It was a squared-off jar like some of the
classy imported jams arrive in, holding 12 oz. of deep ruby red fruit, with the
words “world class” and “premium product” on the label. The label, when I finally got around to
reading its backside over my first cup of coffee the next morning, also
informed me that it was a product of Egypt, imported indeed.
And that’s when the shame moved
in. One dollar American paid for a glass
jar with a metal lid, raspberries, sugar, and pectin; it paid for the energy and
labor for processing, and even more for shipping half-way around the
world. What could the Egyptian berry
farmers have received for their fruit in this product, or the sugar
producers? The jar manufacturers, the
jam makers, the longshoremen loading cases of jam aboard ships?
And what American product did my
purchase displace? The fine jam makers
in Fresno County may get $2.50 or $3.00 for their jars of jam produced only an
hour away. Why would I not pay $2.00
more for this little luxury to keep my neighbors in business, reduce (or at
least not contribute to increased) greenhouse gases, global warming, pollution
of the oceans? I didn’t even need a new
jar of jam: I found two in the cupboard
when I got home.
And this is the issue I tripped over
as I girded up once again to protest the proposed location of a new Dollar
General store in Lindsay: I’m up against
the wall of my own buying behaviors. I
know what it could mean to Lindsay’s buying public to have something like a
general store back in town, especially one with discount prices where you can
snag little luxuries for yourself with the justification of getting a real
bargain. How many of us in our
now-not-so-prosperous town can afford to pay full price for things, at least in
our minds? And if it eventually drives
stores out of town with higher prices for the same goods made in China or
Thailand or even Egypt, like Rite Aid or Art Serna’s hardware store, can we
ourselves be blamed? We only bought one
little jar of raspberry jam for ourselves.
Each one of us cannot bear the responsibility for a marketing system
gone mad through global trading. Heck,
at least the raspberry growers in Egypt made something instead of nothing in
this transaction.
In many ways the race is already
lost, at least for the moment. Those of
us who would, if we could, vote anti-trade in November’s election in honor of
the jobs lost to foreign countries in years past, will be standing in line on
Dollar General’s opening day, waiting to dive in for the bargains from this
globalized fact of life. I will have
eaten all my raspberry jam and begun to save thumb tacks or paper clips in the
convenient little squared-off jar, hoping to remember all that little luxury
has cost us.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a native-born bargain hunter who writes. You can send her your stories of little
luxury hunting c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
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