Cheap Read Free

vintage stores. As for nabbing a free parking spot in New York on a late Friday afternoon? Well, for me that is and will always be priceless.

INTRODUCTION
    GRESHAM’S LAW
    If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.
    | BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
     
     
Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure—attractively packaged but inferior in content.
    ALAN WATTS
     
     
     
     
     
    Airport Mesa is a popular spot to gather in Sedona, Arizona, especially at dusk. It is a mystical time when the faithful perch on sandstone boulders and meditate as the sun slips below the western horizon. Native Americans believe Sedona is sacred, and for good reason. How else to explain its stark unearthly beauty and the splendor of its red-rock vistas and sandstone canyons?
    Or, more to the point, how else to explain the vortexes? Vortexes, I’m told, are where the earth’s magnetic lines merge into a tingling energy that frees the mind and renews the spirit. A staunch empiricist, I try hard not to believe this. But as the sun burns down to a fuchsia smudge, the earth cools and my will weakens. Reluctantly, I’m sensing the vibe. At the same time, though, I can’t help but be distracted a little by the loot gleaming like trophies from Navajo blankets strewn fetchingly across the rocks. There are necklaces and rings and bracelets made of silver and semiprecious stones, crafted by the same weathered hands that hold them up for inspection. A silver chain hung with a turquoise pendant costs eight bucks! Who can resist? I chose one for each of my daughters. The Native American artisanal jewelry maker drops them into a plastic sandwich bag. “For you, two for fifteen dollars,” she says, smiling. Ah, a bargain.
    On the drive back to our hotel, a colleague confides that what I took to be silver and turquoise appears to be tin and glass. He estimates the worth of these trinkets at just a bit more than the Baggies they’re carried in. Although I feign disappointment, this revelation is no surprise. I wasn’t really expecting quality jewelry; quality wasn’t the point. Maybe I didn’t get value, but I did get a “good deal.” Those very same trinkets, I reasoned, would have cost much more at a tourist boutique in downtown Sedona. Most important, I hadn’t done the unthinkable. I hadn’t paid full price.
    Americans are enamored of bargains, a love that does not go unrequited. Paying retail today is a sucker’s game. There are more discount and warehouse stores, more bargain basements, more dollar stores and closeout stores than ever before in our history. Most of us buy many things at discount every week—from discounted laundry detergent to two-for-one Ram trucks. Given this reality, one would think that shoppers would believe what we’ve been told for decades: that the consumer is king and queen of the marketplace. But despite discounts galore, Americans habitually fret that we are paying too much. Lisa Bolton, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, said there is good reason for this confusion. Most of us, she said, have absolutely no idea of what goes into setting a price. “Consumers don’t think about the costs behind what they buy,” she said. “They link price to profit, and they grossly overestimate profit margins.”
    The skyrocketing cost of fuel and food in mid-2008 seemed to confirm our deepest fears that unchecked inflation would be our ruin. Now we really were paying too much! And how could we not worry given that in recent years corporate profits and wages had become a zero-sum game? Despite astonishing productivity growth, median family income, adjusting for inflation, dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007, at the same time that average family spending on basic expenses grew $4,655. Meanwhile, corporate profits doubled. As the gross domestic product ballooned, ordinary Americans lost both ground and faith—and rising prices seemed to be at the heart of