Reddit mentions of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

Ah! Have I got reading recommendations for you!

• Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture has been mentioned a few times in FFA and people generally found it excellent. It isn't fashion-specific, but talks about market pricing practices in general, the psychology of pricing to certain numbers, running discounts/sales and how it's intended to influence consumer behavior, the ethics and worker's rights issues behind cheap goods…
  
• Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion is specific to fashion, and it's the book written by the woman interviewed in the NPR segment I linked in the original post! It's really good as a kind of exposé into all the messy and undesirable and unethical and concerning and polluting practices going on behind cheap, disposable fashion, and the dangers of the ethos behind the fast fashion industry.
  
• The Reader's Digest Household Hints and Handy Tips is legit the most amazing lifehack-y book ever. All the classic stuff on making your own shampoo, caring for a garden, &c &c &c &c…but! The stuff you're interested in is the super-comprehensive-worth-the-piddly-<$10-USD-price-tag-alone section on how to buy quality garments, caring for different fabrics, how to deal with various kinds of stains…it's amazing. Cannot recommend highly enough.
  
• Our beloved /u/SuperStellar wrote a bra care guide for ABTF and is currently working on a general materials/fabric info and care guide for FFA. So hopefully soon we'll have an awesome guide for that on FFA as well!

Another great source for how this evolved is [Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture] (http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-High-Cost-Discount-Culture/dp/0143117637) by Ellen Ruppel Shell. I usually forget everything about a required-reading book from school, but this one really stuck with me. (its also become my most-loaned book)

Reminds me a bit of when I read Cheap.

You're right, the man will never be rich with his current model, but then look at what the article says most of them wish [need] to become in order to achieve success - they want to open a fancy shop and then start slapping their brand on cheaper items. That is the true business model, you just need the illusion of respectability so that you can whore it out to the highest bidder of poorly made goods.

There's a great book by Ellen Ruppel Shell that I read not too long ago titled Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. The author describes all the ways companies do everything possible to externalize the fully-burdened costs of doing business in order to offer lower and lower prices.

Interestingly, there's nary a mention of companies working to make their product better in ways that would be both profitable and allow for a higher price-point that consumers would accept.

The thing is, so many people are barely making enough money to eek out a tolerable existence. Profit-driven companies will, among other things, cut wages to below what a person can live on. Those same companies wonder why nobody will buy their goods if they don't sell them for very, very cheap.

I think a lot of you may be interested in the book:
Cheap: the high cost of discount culture (by ellen ruppel)

http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-High-Cost-Discount-Culture/dp/0143117637

It goes into great detail about what the OP is talking about.