The Price of Things

I haven't really kept up with writing here- I doubt anyone is really agonizing over that, but my excuse is that life has been intensly busy especially with the two week visit from my husband's family. This visit was great but also gave me a fresh perspective on my resolution for the year.
My husband's family is from Ukraine, so when they came to visit, of course they wanted to buy things to take home to friends and family. Since I was (and I guess I still am) the primary shopper in our home, it came upon me to take them around to fulfill their shopping lists. It was so strange to get back into this mindset again. To think about the best place to find things, the best price and such. It was such an odd feeling. I only vaguely remember the mindset that my shopping mode put me in. When I jumped back into it after such an absence, it was very stark and strange. It is the weirdest feeling, the consumer mind. I become focused on the goal of finding, obtaining, owning, possessing. Because I have always been a major bargain hunter (I even clipped coupons when I was in High School) it is an intense game for me. Not only is their the drive to find the item desired and the high that comes from purchasing- like a check mark on the list of things to do or that special addition to a collection, but their is the hunter's instinct that comes into play, to insure that my money is well spent and that I got  the "deal", that I beat the system. Where previously these feelings gave me a sense of accomplishment, this time, it was unsettling. The purchases weren't for me, but what it did was give me a glimpse into what I had given up with out truly giving in to it again.
I don't know that I would be completely changed if I went back to buying things again. I think that this little experience showed me how easy it is to slip into that hunter mentality again. However, because of my experiences in this year so far, I noticed it more and I recognized the emptiness of it. I began to take stock of how my family life has been. Truly, there are hours upon hours that have been saved from the wasteland of shopping and diverted to walks with my kids, book reading and other worthy endeavors. Not only that, a whole area of my mind is not free to refocus my attention to things other than the "hunt". I can already feel the peaceful effects of it.
An interesting thing about what my inlaws were buying is that it wasn't just souveniers, it was clothing, perfume and such. Apparently, the selection in Ukriane is a lot more limited and they felt that the clothing quality here is better for the price. This was so strange to me. Surely, the $15 shirts made in a sweatshop on the other side of the world for pennies could not be better than what could be found in Ukraine, an industrialized country that probably outsources less than we do. I don't know exactly how their economy works, but as I drove in the car with my Ukrainian family, past countless stores, buildings everywhere selling so much stuff, I really felt that they were the lucky ones that didn't have to be inundated with it all, that their landscape wasn't quite so pockmarked with commercialism, that they didn't have such a burden of choice to complicate their day to day shopping. After doing a little research online, I discovered that things are generally cheaper in Ukraine but that the price for the percieved high quality brand name clothing and other such items has skyrocketed as they have become status symbols. I wonder if the perception of "quality goods" in America is real or if the off brand items they get are really just as good. I just can't imagine how the cheap shirts at Walmart or Target could be any better quality than what they have.
 The average yearly income for a Ukrainian is somewhere around $4,000. Since the average income in America is more than 10 times that amount, I figure I ought to be paying AT LEAST double what they pay for food and clothing. If I adjust it to 10 times as much as they pay for things, then I should pay $430 for my American jeans or a man's shirt, $600 for a pair of shoes, $10 for a gallon of milk, $3 for a pound of apples, $20 a pound for ground beef, and $40 for a meal at McDonald's.
 http://www.tefl.com/home/col_survey.html?ci_id=88&tefl_session=9fad1961fc581111f947e98b26b81f3d&x=1&y=1
Certainly the difference in the salary to cost of living ratio has somewhat to do with the health of the economy, but there is another issue at hand. Even when people in the US do pay $600 for a pair of shoes, in many cases, the people who made the shoes still earned pennies a day and the higher cost paid went into the the pocket of some designer label owner and not towards global equality.
When my husband came to the US, he owned about 5 shirts and 2 pairs of pants and 2 pairs of shoes. He was in the practice of wearing his clothes two days in a row before washing. I'm not necessarily advocating that, but I think a shirt for each day of the week and 3-4 pairs of pants/skirt or whatever should be enough. That is all I could afford if I paid even $100 for a shirt but I would do it if it meant people elsewhere earned dollars, not pennies a day and could actually afford to buy the clothes they made, and more importantly, afford running water and a balanced meal for their family.
I am in the middle of reading "The Story of Stuff" by Annie Leonard. It is really eye opening.. anyway, I see all these things that are unjust and should be changed and certainly it is overwhelming. Even as I think about how it is reasonable to own only 7 shirts, I count 60+ shirts in my closet- and I'm not even talking about t-shirts. The fashionista in me cringes at the thought of cutting back on one of my means of personal expression, but I think that perhaps I can at least scale back to 30 right? They are for different seasons and occasions, some are undershirts and such... but I rationalize. I wish it were easier to choose ethically made clothing. That it were easy to pick up a shirt and know that it was produced by someone who earned a living wage and not produced with the miriad of environmentally damaging toxins used in current manufacturing. To buy something like that, you pretty much have to order from a special catalogue or deal with the extremely limited selection of such things that some stores offer and then hope that the lable isn't a hoax. If I'm not quite up to that yet, at least I can limit the amount I consume of "Conventionally" produced clothing and donate my "extra" money to a humanitarian aid organization. That seems a bit backwards doesn't it?