A myth-shattering investigation of the true cost of America's passion for finding a better bargain From the shuttered factories of the Rust Belt to the strip malls of the Sun Belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little- examined obsession with bargains is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time, having fueled an excess of consumerism that blights our land­scapes, escalates personal debt, lowers our standard of living, and even skews of our concept of time. Spotlighting the peculiar forces that drove Americans away from quality, durability, and craftsmanship and towards quantity, quantity, and more quantity, Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the rise of the bargain through our current big-box profusion to expose the astronomically high cost of cheap.

The social contract that has underpinned growth and political stability in the Western world since World War II has broken down. Houses, health care and higher education have become unaffordable to a majority of people, while the burden of unregulated monopolies, globalization and uncontrolled immigration has fallen disproportionately on the lower and middle classes. Wrapped in political correctness, an increasingly out of touch Western elite continues catering to special interests and fails to grasp the urgency for change. Populist movements harnessing public anger appear unable to propose and implement effective solutions. The last financial crisis was bad enough. But the next crisis will spread deeper and wider. And yet we stand economically, politically and most of all intellectually unprepared. This book is the story of how we have arrived at the brink of disaster and how we can move away from the win-lose policies of recent decades to restore much-needed balance.

This work provides a comprehensive portrait of how the US standard of living has changed during recent years, as compared to the whole period since World War II. The study presents statistics that are compiled from government and private data sources. Using the evidence, the authors analyze trends in income, wages, jobs, wealth, poverty and the distribution of taxes and compare US trends with those of other advanced countries.