While shopping at the Goodwill resale store in Seattle, Washington this past winter, I thought for sure that I had experienced one of those moments of great intellectual clarity. For the life of me, I cannot remember what those moments are called, but the passage of time and the swirl of work related distractions have not dimmed the vision.
As I looked through the saucepans, picture frames, chairs, and corkscrews for the perfect items to satisfy my needs, I realized that unlike other shopping experiences, my choice of purchases at the Goodwill would be driven entirely by quality of goods. Not because my economic condition would allow me to purchase any one of the 75 corkscrews or 25 2-quart saucepans that I chose, but because every style and offering in the corkscrew bin was priced at 75 cents and every saucepan could be purchased for $2.50.
After rifling through dozens of corkscrews I chose just the right one. My inspection of 15 different saucepans resulted in a fine one with just right heft, handle, and lid. After plunking down the $3.25 plus tax, we were out the door.
What a relief and contrast from a trip to the big-box retail outlet or downtown shop where choices are complicated by considerable price variations, bubble wrappings, advertising distortions, and the like, as well as quality issues.
So these are the factors of this Goodwill shopping spree that popped into my head and tantalized my desire to understand the relationship we all have with each other in the realm of products, needs, desires, quality, utility, and the currency that ties it all together. Currency, current, the flow of money (dollars) in and out of pockets, ATM’s, purses, banks, briefcases, cyberspace, and cash registers…much like water flowing in large and small rivers and streams, disappearing under bedrock and into culverts to appear again and settle in pools or lakes and oceans with many inlets and outlets.
One price, equalized buying power of shoppers, and a wide range of product quality. Remarkable! Where else in our “market” economy could we find these three factors at play? Well, a BMW auto dealership comes to mind. An unexpected common characteristic of a resale store and a high-priced auto dealership. Remarkable, again! The very poor and the very rich have what one might call the “luxury” of shopping to satisfy their needs without the encumbrance of all of the free market bologna.
It has taken some 40 years of shopping to reach this epiphany (that’s the word) in great part because I have spent those years shopping somewhere stuck in the middle of the U.S. economy where the “free market” reigns.
Of course, there are vast differences between these fringe positions in our economy. The well-off can move freely throughout the full spectrum of shopping theaters, while the very poor are often hard pressed to fulfill their needs at the Goodwill and can never even consider entering the BMW dealership as a bonafide participant.
Another dissimilarity is that the very poor purchase mostly used, recycled, and discarded goods while the wealthy consume primarily newly manufactured items. In this way, as in many others,
the Goodwill fringe impacts the drain on our natural resource capital far less than the BMW fringe.
As current trends in the U.S. economy continue, with more and more of our currency and natural resources flowing towards the BMW fringe and more and more people approaching the Goodwill fringe, we will at some point find the vast majority of our population in one fringe or the other.
Has my $3.25 shopping spree at Goodwill brought me to an understanding of the theories being tossed around about the “disappearing middle class” in the United States of America?
Perhaps so.
