Every couple of months I do an IKEA tour to see what's new ( there are three next to freeways in So. Calif ). An elevator takes you to the top floor and you are sent back down to street level with arrows on the floor. There are escalators for the shopping carts as you descend. My daughter has an IKEA "factory-built" kitchen [ the "factory" (in Canada) she said still needs work ]. So far we have Billy shelves, votive candles for my wife, a really neat galvanized BIG watering can, very stylish soap dishes for the bathrooms, some wonderful glass beer mugs from Romania ( as well as glasses ), and our 10' sheers for $2.00/pair. We also have stylish Target stuff: a cutting board & veggie slicer designed by Michael Graves. We have an old Austrian square dinner table ( oak ) cut down to coffee table height - from a used furniture dealer - and our 1959 model 12' Swedish beech-framed couch - which is back in style and re-upholstered. Our matching white Adirondack outdoor chairs were also KD ( from China ) - from Albertson's at $26.00 each - everybody wants 'em. The great thing about thrift stores is the shoppers don't have the same taste as the donors - they often don't want the really stylish stuff - once I flew to Denver from L.A. and filled two garbage bags with incredible shirts, sweaters etc. from the ARC store - and mailed 'em home. Best shopping trip of my life. Our old wing chair has new fabric and a new ottoman to match. Our new Armstrong "oak" kitchen floor from Lowe's cost me $180.00 [ easy install ] and looks much better than a real stained and sealed oak floor. It's all in the eye of the beholder. I am a designer by trade. Living in a pleasant environment on no dollars is the best revenge.

Tools don't cost that much. DIY advice is everywhere. Start modestly, say a coffee table. Set aside a Saturday and go online and find a design and plan you like.

They are free for the Googling.

Then go to a Lowes or neighborhood lumber store and tell them what you want to do.

By the end of the day you will know how to make your own "stuff" . Tables, desks, bookcases and chairs are all do-able.

Fun and girls do it just as good as guys.

Neila Rose,

My Dad feels about jam the way others do about wine or beer. His favorite one is "Triple Berry," which I introduced him to, from Upper Michigan.

Since the mid-2000s I've been through three distributors, basically small mail order businesses that probably also sell retail, which come and go. But the jam is a keeper. Because it's made in small batches, however, you will never find it in a place like Wal-Mart that sells goods for mass consumption.

I used to complain about cheap stuff at the stores. I learned not to limit my choices to the mass retailers. They have their place, cheap stuff has it's place. Sometimes people cannot afford better than that, sometimes that is all they need.

But what is the driving force behind cheap stuff taking over for better craftsmanship and quality? It's not China. It's not Walmart. It's not Ikea. It's the Federal Reserve that eats away at the value of the dollar each and every day.

Why do you think that prices for the same sort of things haven't changed much but they are much more cheaply made? It's because nobody can make a profit at that price with craftsmanship any more. The dollar doesn't buy what it used to, because there are so many more dollars floating around as the federal reserve creates them to pay for the government's wars and social programs.

Manufacturers and retailers fight the fight against the fed everyday so that our standard of living doesn't slide as fast as it would without them. Manufacturers who specialize in 'cheap stuff' also provide a great service for the poor. The poor don't have to do without.

Quality goods are around, you just have to look for them and be willing to pay much higher prices for them than you'll think is reasonable. But inflation adjusted it will be close to those products of old. It will quickly become clear our wages haven't kept up with the Fed's destructive work.

If all we could buy was quality stuff, then a lot of us would be doing without.

This is from a NYT's article that appeared in late 2003:

Etch A Sketch sold for $3.99 when it was introduced [in 1960]. If it had kept pace with the consumer price index over its 43 years, it would retail for $23.69 today instead of $9.99.

Mr. Killgallon and his brother, Larry, who is president of Ohio Art, said in an interview that their efforts to reduce costs ran out of steam by the late 1990's, in part because of soaring employee health care expenses. Moving production from Ohio to China became irresistible....

[Chinese] employees, mostly teenage migrants from internal provinces, say they work many more hours and earn about 40 percent less than the [fulfillment] company claims. They sleep head-to-toe in tiny rooms. They staged two strikes recently demanding they get paid closer to the legal minimum wage.

Most do not have pensions, medical insurance or work contracts. The company's crib sheet recommends if inspectors press to see such documents, workers should "intentionally waste time and then say they can't find them," according to company memos provided to The New York Times by employees....

Thank you for that, calcareous. I got to page 10 of the letters and was a bit depressed that there was little talk of the larger economic forces at work.

Jeebus christ, we need to offer economics history in our schools as a requirement along with math and reading in a bad way.

The biggest macro economic aspect of the cheap-goods/cheap-labor situation we find ourselves in has to do with pegging the dollar onto oil. Simply put, trade in petrodollars (facilitated by Nixon in the 70's) has forced a massive trade imbalance:

Those outside the US need to produce more goods more cheaply in order to accumulate dollar reserves, in order to secure their oil supplies. Yes, this is a vast simplification of the process, but it happens to be the end result: other countries are forced to cheapen their prices (and labor) to undercut our own so they can purchase oil and maintain a dollar reserve in case of emergency.

This is the single biggest reason why average wages in the US haven't risen since the 70's, why work has been moving overseas for the last few decades, why there are sweatshops, and why the US has a huge trade deficit.

And why people haven't demanded higher wages in that almost 4-decade-span--cheap imports seemed to make up the difference.

Instead of paying US workers more, our leaders chose to force other countries into an unfair economic situation (forced to sell us cheap goods, basically), driving the price of labor and goods down, both inside and outside the US. Another version of economic imperialism, that also produced a domestic cheap labor economy.