In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood Americ

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Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 463 KB
Print Length: 320 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0316030287
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (September 7, 2009)
Sold by: Hachette Book Group
Language: English
ASIN: B002M2ASYM

Guilt-free consumption has always been a cherished American value, but this book explores its flip side: a historical engagement with thriftiness, starting in the pre-revolutionary days with Benjamin Franklin, championed by reformers Booker T. Washington and Lydia Marie Child, taken to absurd lengths by the 19th-century miserly millionaire Hetty Green, espoused by economist John Maynard Keynes and married to environmental concerns by contemporary conservationists. Journalist Weber's treatise begins with recollecting her father's conservative habits and ramifies into a far-ranging examination of social programs, alternative movements and mainstream institutions including savings banks, home economics, industrial efficiency experts, freegans, economists and war departments, all of which promote some form of frugality. While failing to provide a satisfying distinction between cheapness and thrift, the author provides a rich canvas from which to consider American ambivalence about saving; she examines how thriftiness became a racist pejorative hurled at Jewish and Asian immigrants. While the rise of consumer culture and advertising undercut individual and social efforts to save, the author also finds structural reasons for our profligacy in growing financial illiteracy, wage stagnation and deregulated financial markets. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review "What's the fine line between thrift and stinginess, self-control and compulsion, purpose and obsession? Lauren Weber's fresh take on the quirky side of saving and spending couldn't be timelier." (Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind )"Never preachy or sanctimonious, In Cheap We Trust is one of the most fascinating and life-altering books I've read this year. Its insights are profound. If you want to lighten your footprint while deepening the quality of your life, you'll love this book." (John Robbins, author Diet For A New America, The Food Revolution, and The New Good Life )"Consumers have been researched to death. It's about time the tightwads among us got the same kind of loving attention. In Cheap We Trust is immensely readable and highly illuminating - the perfect guide to the oncoming era of like-it-or-not thrift." (Jim Lardner, co-author of Up to Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies Are Drowning Americans in Debt )"This book has a far better chance of making cheapness socially acceptable than Ben Franklin, Jack Benny, and my father combined." (Joel Stein, Time columnist ) In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood Americ