We Get What We Pay For, And Someone Else Pays

A few months back I was researching my Schwinn Spitfire. This is a classic, from the days before they were known as "beach cruisers" or even "cruisers"; they were simply single speed, coaster brake equipped bikes. In the case of the Spitfire, and its near stablemate the Tempest, they were dubbed "industrial bikes". Industrial indeed, for at 22kg, they are extremely solid.

My Spitfire was made in April 1978. At the time, it sold for $139, not a cheap single speed but fairly typical for the period. When I found the bike, as a pile of rusty parts in early summer of 2008, it was basically worthless. But, adjusting for inflation, it would have sold for over $450 new.

That seems pretty steep, but in fact many well made bikes pretty much cost the same. A comparable Huffy model from the same period was correspondingly less, of course, but would still be over $300 today.

These were mass produced bicycles. Huffys were common to most department stores, while Schwinns by that time were relegated to shops. The lesser bikes, your AMFs and Murrays, plus a few off brands such as Setico (common to the local chain, Pic-n-Save) could frequently be found for much less, usually the $50 to $75 range. You don't see too many of them around, and for good reason; they were poorly made, usually from plants in Taiwan.

Those plants in Taiwan would eventually improve, and much of their production would be taken up by manufacturers in the People's Republic. A few years ago, Huffy and Schwinn were acquired by a large conglomerate, and the production moved to those same manufacturers.

Which is why you can still find new Schwinn and Huffy cruisers for less than a couple hundred dollars. Suffice to say, they are a far cry from their ancestors.

But they are inexpensive and every new school year or Christmas they leave the racks in droves and find their way onto American streets. And, due in no small part to their cheap construction, frequently find their way to dumpsters within a couple of years, when they are sometimes replaced by bikes of similar quality.

Logically, simply spending a good amount of money on a good quality bike is the right thing to do. The larger retailers know this, but seldom stock them. Their business is in turnaround; bikes break and are replaced. For the most part it is a good economic model for retailers, but a poor one for the consumer.

But that's not what this is all about.

The drive to keep consumer prices down has had several negative effects on our economy for the past three decades. The first is the mass migration of manufacturing to areas where the costs can be kept down. While this has sometimes resulted in good products, the vast majority of these products have been of lower quality, cheaply made and soon landfill fodder.

The second is an artificial devaluation of consumer goods in some areas, and a resultant flattening of wages. Because the costs of a vast number of consumer products is so low, the drive by the worker to demand even modest increases in wages decreases. Forget the fact that some things have kept pace with inflation or have even surpassed it; we can still fill our lives with cheap consumer goods, so we feel as if we are living a good life. That feeling is what the producers and marketers of these goods are banking on, so to speak. As long as those cheaply made trinkets that clutter our lives can be supplied, we should be expected to feel good.

The trade-off, though, has been a reduction in real manufacturing jobs, stagnant wages and a lifestyle that is artificially buoyant. A good many real productive jobs have been replaced by service jobs, which lack the same security.

We didn't mind, of course, as long as we could have that lifestyle. People here may have lost jobs, and people abroad may be forced into factories with abominable working conditions and horrific wages. As long as we could have our big televisions or even cheap bicycles.

Yet we have embraced this lifestyle, even as we have been racing towards along with an economic model that was unsustainable. What I fear is that we have yet to hit rock bottom, and it may be all of us who have yet to feel that impact.