Do you think t-shirts should cost $5.00 a piece? I think at Costco a 6-pack of Calvin Klein V-neck t-shirts (I love V-necks much to the frustration of the general public) costs $30.00.
What would happen if we all paid $30.00 per t-shirt at Costco? I’m a whiz at pivot tables in Excel so the function tells me the total would be $180.00.
I have roughly 28 t-shirts, as inventoried this morning. Do I need 28 t-shirts? It is my dress of choice, especially on formal occasions. But I could do without. Looking at the detritus of my house, I think this would save a lot of space.
No! Even writing that makes me cringe; I’m an addict, a consumer addict. I need all of these shirts despite the fact I don’t wear 33% of them. I want wearable cotton-based products coursing through my veins. I’m like a starving hyena, desperate for consumer packaged goods to satisfy my desires. Don’t touch my stuff.
Okay, if they cost $30.00 each I’d definitely have at least 50% less, and I think at this price they could be manufactured domestically instead of through international slave labor. So that means jobs. And less waste. And a shrinkage of the floating plastic island in the Pacific Ocean that young person is trying to clean up with a giant net. I saw it on 60 Minutes.
But what about my other stuff? I’d go broke trying to replace it all in order to feel good. Sweatshirts (another classy staple), multiple dress shirts of which I wear one approximately once a year, jeans, sweats, slacks of a sort, socks, (no underwear I skip that), baseball hats, stocking caps…
You know how many tumblers are in my cupboard? About 117. There’s like 5 Swig tumblers, a host of coffee ones, mysterious plastic-metal hybrids that are of the “sport” variety even though if I participated in a sport right now my priority would be orchestrating super long time-outs so I could eat chips and drink Mountain Dew.
What if all this stuff suffers a 500% price increase, which is what the internet says is the percentage increase of $5.00 to $30.00?
Would China result to military tactics to maintain dominance?
Would I become depressed?
Would I suddenly find the time to review basic mathematics?
Would there be an appropriate and needed redistribution of wealth in our country?
It’s like last night’s debate. I already knew what was going to happen, yet I didn’t want to know.