Quotes from Ellen Ruppel Shell

Discounters gave the common man and woman the opportunity to eschew the cobbler and the darning needle, to break in a brand-new pair of shoes or socks when their toes poked through the old ones. Discounters made ordinary folks feel rich by putting a wide selection of goods within easy reach of all but the most meager budgets. Someone had to pay, of course, but that someone need not be the customer.

Andrew Young, a former U.S. Congressman and U.N. ambassador turned Wal-Mart spokesman, seemed to offer an explanation: "Poverty in America," he said, "is market potential unrealized." It seems that the poor benefit the discounting industry far more than the discounting industry benefits the poor.

mass market consumption offers the facade of social equality without forcing society to go through the hard work of redistributing wealth. Low prices lead consumers to think they can get what they want without necessarily giving them what they want - or need. The ancient Roman phrase for this is panem et circenses, bread and circuses, the art of plying citizens with pleasures to distract them from pain.

If enough dishonest merchants water their milk, more and more customers will forget what normal milk tastes like and buy only the cheaper - watered down - variety.

Americans pay less for food than do citizens of any other developed nation.

Craftsmanship cements a relationship of trust between buyer and seller, worker and employer, and expects something of both. It is about caring about the work and its application. It is what distinguishes the work of humans from the work of machines, and it is everything that IKEA and other discounters are not.

Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to China. U.S. Department of Commerce data reveal that from 2002 to 2003 Mexico lost market share in thirteen of its top twenty export industries, nearly always to China. With fewer jobs at home, Mexicans are finding it all the more compelling to cross the border into the United States in search of work. No fence is high enough to bar workers desperate to feed their families.

At a national level, the study found that thanks to Wal-Mart the total earnings of retail workers declined by $4.5 billion, with most of these losses concentrated in metropolitan areas.

since wage and benefit savings are not the main part of the cost advantage for the company it could (conceivably) "continue to pass on most of these savings while paying higher wages and benefits.

these women and men were able to sustain work "outside of the employment context," to cobble together not only a better living but a more meaningful life.

In the early days of outlets, manufacturers ripped labels from items because they were reluctant to link their brand with the cut-rate price. But today many discounters do just the opposite, trumpeting goods under brand names to give the impression of quality while not necessarily backing that claim in a meaningful way.

MIT-trained urban development expert Wig Zamore said: "IKEA is the least sustainable retailer on the planet.

Carter found particularly noxious "a mistaken idea of freedom [as] the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.