Download or read book The True Cost of Low Prices written by Jeffry Odell Korgen and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers more than an academic analysis. In each of nine topical chapters authors Jeffry Korgen and Vincent Gallagher begin with a story of a real person who has felt the impact of one particular aspect of globalization. They then explore the 'signs of the times', examining the relationship of these issues to low prices for goods and services.
Download or read book The China Price written by Alexandra Harney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark work of investigative reporting, former Financial Times correspondent Alexandra Harney uncovers a story of immense significance to us all: how China's factory economy gains a competitive edge by selling out its workers, environment, and future. Harney's firsthand reporting brings us face-to-face with a world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact a staggering toll in human misery and environmental damage. This eye-opening expose offers, for the first time, an intimate look at the defining business story of our time.
Download or read book The True Cost of Low Prices written by Jeffry Odell Korgen and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now updated and expanded! Built upon the structure and content of the successful first edition (currently in its eighth printing), this second edition of The True Cost of Low Prices: The Violence of Globalization examines the effects of globalization on the earth's poorest and most vulnerable people within the context of scripture and church teaching. The text engages the reader with stories of the women, men, and children living in poverty who have experienced both the promise of the global economy and its troubling outcomes. The nine thematic chapters begin with a story of a person affected by a particular dimension of the violence of globalization. That is followed by a description of the "signs of the times," including the topic's relationship to low prices, and then by "what the church teaches," utilizing the Catechism, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, papal encyclicals, the documents of Vatican II, and the statements of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Each chapter concludes with "signs of hope," descriptions of groups and strategies that make a difference. Each chapter also includes discussion questions and suggestions for making a difference.
Download or read book True Cost Accounting for Food written by Barbara Gemmill-Herren and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how True Cost Accounting is an effective tool we can use to address the pervasive imbalance in our food system. Calls are coming from all quarters that the food system is broken and needs a radical transformation. A system that feeds many yet continues to create both extreme hunger and diet-related diseases, and one which has significant environmental impacts, is not serving the world adequately. This volume argues that True Cost Accounting in our food system can create a framework for a systemic shift. What sounds on the surface like a practice relegated to accountants is ultimately a call for a new lens on the valuation of food and a new relationship with the food we eat, starting with the reform of a system out of balance. From the true cost of corn, rice and water, to incentives for soil health, the chapters economically compare conventional and regenerative, more equitable farming practices in and food system structures, including taking an unflinching look at the true cost of cheap labour. Overall, this volume points towards the potential for our food system to be more human-centred than profit-centred and one that has a more respectful relationship to the planet. It sets forth a path forward based on True Cost Accounting for food. This path seeks to fix our current food metrics, in policy and in practice, by applying a holistic lens that evaluates the actual costs and benefits of different food systems, and the impacts and dependencies between natural systems, human systems, agriculture and food systems. This volume is essential reading for professionals and policymakers involved in developing and reforming the food system, as well as students and scholars working on food policy, food systems and sustainability.
Download or read book The China Price written by Alexandra Harney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark eyewitness exposŽ of how China's factory economy competes for Western business by selling out its workers, its environment, and its future In The China Price, acclaimed Financial Timescorrespondent Alex Harney uncovers the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a brutal, Hobbesian world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen and unconscionable toll in human misery and environmental damage. In a way, Harney shows, what goes on in China is inevitable. In a country with almost no transparency, where graft is institutionalized and workers have little recourse to the rule of law, incentives to lie about business practices vastly outweigh incentives to tell the truth. Harney reveals that despite a decade of monitoring factories, outsiders all too often have no idea of the conditions under which goods from China are made. She exposes the widespread practice of using a dummy or model factory as a company's false window out to the world, concealing a vast number of illegal factories operating completely off the books. Some Western companies are better than others about sniffing out such deception, but too many are perfectly happy to embrace plausible deniability as long as the prices remain so low. And in the gold-rush atmosphere that's infected the country, in which everyone is clamoring to get rich at once and corruption is rampant, it's almost impossible for the Chinese government's own underfunded regulatory mechanisms to do much good at all. But perhaps the most important revelation in The China Priceis how fast change is coming, one way or another. A generation of Chinese flocked from the rural interior of the country to its coastline, where its factory work largely is, in the largest mass migration in human history. But that migration has slowed dramatically, in no small part because of widespread disenchantment with the way of life the factories offer. As pollution in China's industrial cities worsens and their infrastructure buckles, and grassroots activism for more legal recourse grows, pressures are mounting on the system that will not dissipate without profound change. Managing the violence of that change is the greatest challenge China faces in the near future, and managing its impact on the world economy is the challenge that faces us all.
Download or read book High Cost of Free Parking written by Donald Shoup and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Off-street parking requirements are devastating American cities. So says the author in this no-holds-barred treatise on the way parking should be. Free parking, the author argues, has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion, but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. The author proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking.
Download or read book Cheaponomics written by Michael Carolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you really think you are getting a good deal when given that free mobile phone for switching service providers, if a multinational retailer undercuts its competitors or by the fact that food is relatively cheaper today in many countries than ever before? Think again! As Michael Carolan clearly shows in this compelling book, cheapness is an illusion. The real cost of low prices is alarmingly high. It is shown for example that citizens are frequently subsidising low prices through welfare support to poorly-paid workers in their own country, or relying on the exploitation of workers in poor countries for cheap goods. Environmental pollution may not be costed into goods and services, but is paid for indirectly by people living away from its source or by future generations. Even with private cars, when the total costs of this form of mobility are tallied it proves to be an astronomically expensive model of transportation. All of these costs need to be accounted for. The author captures these issues by the concept of "cheaponomics". The key point is that costs and risks are socialised: we all pay for cheapness, but not at the point of purchase. Drawing on a wide range of examples and issues from over-consumption and waste to over-work, unemployment, inequality, and the depersonalising of communities, it is convincingly shown that cheapness can no longer be seen as such a bargain. Instead we need to refocus for a better sense of well-being, social justice and a balanced approach to prosperity.
Download or read book Cheap written by Ellen Ruppel Shell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A myth-shattering investigation of the true cost of America's passion for finding a better bargain From the shuttered factories of the Rust Belt to the strip malls of the Sun Belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little- examined obsession with bargains is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time, having fueled an excess of consumerism that blights our landscapes, escalates personal debt, lowers our standard of living, and even skews of our concept of time. Spotlighting the peculiar forces that drove Americans away from quality, durability, and craftsmanship and towards quantity, quantity, and more quantity, Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the rise of the bargain through our current big-box profusion to expose the astronomically high cost of cheap.
Download or read book The True Costs of College written by Nancy Kendall and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the true costs of attendance faced by low- and moderate-income students on four public college campuses, and the consequences of these costs on students’ academic pathways and their social, financial, health, and emotional well-being. The authors’ exploration of the true costs of academics, living expenses, and student services leads them to conclude that current college policies and practices do not support low-income and otherwise marginalized students’ well-being or success. To counter this, they suggest that reform efforts should begin by asking value-based questions about the goals of public higher education, and end by crafting class-responsive policies. They propose three tools that policymakers can use to do this work, and steps that every person can take to revitalize public support for public education, equity-producing policies, and democratic participation in the public arena.
Download or read book Big Box Swindle written by Stacy Mitchell and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Book Sense Pick and Annual Highlight With a New Afterword In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement—and she shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back. Mitchell traces the dramatic growth of mega-retailers—from big boxes like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Costco, and Staples to chains like Starbucks, Olive Garden, Blockbuster, and Old Navy—and the precipitous decline of independent businesses. Drawing on examples from virtually every state in the country, she unearths the extraordinary impact of these companies and the big-box mentality on everything from soaring gasoline consumption to rising poverty rates, failing family farms, and declining voting levels. Along the way, Mitchell exposes the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small, locally owned businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by a few large chains. More than a critique, Big-Box Swindle provides an invigorating account of how some communities have successfully countered the spread of big boxes and rebuilt their local economies. Since 2000, more than two hundred big-box development projects have been halted by groups of ordinary citizens, and scores of towns and cities have adopted laws that favor small-scale, local business development and limit the proliferation of chains. From cutting-edge land-use policies to innovative cooperative small-business initiatives, Mitchell offers communities concrete strategies that can stave off mega-retailers and create a more prosperous and sustainable future.
Download or read book Investment in Blood written by Frank Ledwidge and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this follow-up to his much-praised book Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Frank Ledwidge argues that Britain has paid a heavy cost - both financially and in human terms - for its involvement in the Afghanistan war. Ledwidge calculates the high price paid by British soldiers and their families, taxpayers in the United Kingdom, and, most importantly, Afghan citizens, highlighting the thousands of deaths and injuries, the enormous amount of money spent bolstering a corrupt Afghan government, and the long-term damage done to the British military's international reputation. In this hard-hitting exposé, based on interviews, rigorous on-the-ground research, and official information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Ledwidge demonstrates the folly of Britain's extended participation in an unwinnable war. Arguing that the only true beneficiaries of the conflict are development consultants, international arms dealers, and Afghan drug kingpins, he provides a powerful, eye-opening, and often heartbreaking account of military adventurism gone horribly wrong."--
Download or read book The True Cost of Technology written by Mary Colson and published by Consumer Nation: How to Shop t. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do your buying choices in the supermarket, in the mall, and on the Internet affect the lives of the people who make the things you buy? Thought-provoking case studies and first-hand accounts encourage readers to be informed and ethical shoppers. Find out now to shop to change the world. Where was your latest electronic gadget made? Who makes money from the price you paid for your cell phone? What rights do the workers who built your laptop have? In The True Cost of Technology find out what the links are between supply, demand, working conditions, and the resources that are needed to build just one computer. Do you know what happens to your old phone or computer when you need an upgrade? Discover what environmental impacts your technology purchases have on the planet, too. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Three Trillion Dollar War The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict written by Linda J. Bilmes and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-02-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true cost of the Iraq War is $3 trillion—and counting—rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House. Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. This sobering study by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes casts a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans—for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer's money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.
Download or read book Fit for Growth written by Vinay Couto and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical approach to business transformation Fit for Growth* is a unique approach to business transformation that explicitly connects growth strategy with cost management and organization restructuring. Drawing on 70-plus years of strategy consulting experience and in-depth research, the experts at PwC’s Strategy& lay out a winning framework that helps CEOs and senior executives transform their organizations for sustainable, profitable growth. This approach gives structure to strategy while promoting lasting change. Examples from Strategy&’s hundreds of clients illustrate successful transformation on the ground, and illuminate how senior and middle managers are able to take ownership and even thrive during difficult periods of transition. Throughout the Fit for Growth process, the focus is on maintaining consistent high-value performance while enabling fundamental change. Strategy& has helped major clients around the globe achieve significant and sustained results with its research-backed approach to restructuring and cost reduction. This book provides practical guidance for leveraging that expertise to make the choices that allow companies to: Achieve growth while reducing costs Manage transformation and transition productively Create lasting competitive advantage Deliver reliable, high-value performance Sustainable success is founded on efficiency and high performance. Companies are always looking to do more with less, but their efforts often work against them in the long run. Total business transformation requires total buy-in, and it entails a series of decisions that must not be made lightly. The Fit for Growth approach provides a clear strategy and practical framework for growth-oriented change, with expert guidance on getting it right. *Fit for Growth is a registered service mark of PwC Strategy& Inc. in the United States
Download or read book Scarcity written by Sendhil Mullainathan and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why can we never seem to keep on top of our workload, social diary or chores? Why does poverty persist around the world? Why do successful people do things at the last minute in a sudden rush of energy? Here, economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir reveal that the hidden side behind all these problems is that they're all about scarcity.
Download or read book The Wal Mart Effect written by Charles Fishman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist breaks through the wall of secrecy to reveal how the world's most powerful company really works and how it is transforming the American economy.
Download or read book Hidden Costs of Energy written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-06-26 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the many benefits of energy, most of which are reflected in energy market prices, the production, distribution, and use of energy causes negative effects. Many of these negative effects are not reflected in energy market prices. When market failures like this occur, there may be a case for government interventions in the form of regulations, taxes, fees, tradable permits, or other instruments that will motivate recognition of these external or hidden costs. The Hidden Costs of Energy defines and evaluates key external costs and benefits that are associated with the production, distribution, and use of energy, but are not reflected in market prices. The damage estimates presented are substantial and reflect damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation, motor vehicle transportation, and heat generation. The book also considers other effects not quantified in dollar amounts, such as damages from climate change, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security. While not a comprehensive guide to policy, this analysis indicates that major initiatives to further reduce other emissions, improve energy efficiency, or shift to a cleaner electricity generating mix could substantially reduce the damages of external effects. A first step in minimizing the adverse consequences of new energy technologies is to better understand these external effects and damages. The Hidden Costs of Energy will therefore be a vital informational tool for government policy makers, scientists, and economists in even the earliest stages of research and development on energy technologies.
