The True Cost of Low Prices.

THE TRUE COST OF LOW PRICES By Vincent A. Gallagher (Orbis, 2006)

As a species we go to great lengths to avoid hardship. Vincent A. Gallagher's The True Cost of Low Prices claims we could do this better if only we would share the pain.

As Gallagher explains, more than 35,000 children, each with a life unique as your own, die each day from diseases related to malnutrition. There are more slaves alive now than all those captured in Africa from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Each year a million children become child prostitutes.

The worse news is we're all complicit. We like comfort and plenty. In the U.S. 32 million teenagers spend over $155 billion annually on clothing alone. They can afford these duds because much of the rest of the world is paying the piper. Writes Gallagher: "When you purchase a toy at Wal-Mart, do you ever imagine teenage women in China working from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., 18 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week, in 104-degree temperatures, handling toxic chemicals with their bare hands, and paid as little as 13 cents an hour?"

Wal-Mart is integral to an all-embracing globalization that serves the privileged at the expense of the underprivileged. This structure includes the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, among others, that have helped make the U.S. enviable at unbelievable cost to poor nations.

Since no one enjoys poverty, persuasion has to be abetted by coercion. Wars become necessary to ensure the flow of oil, for example. Few make the connection between your local mall and the decades of studying torture techniques that too frequently become necessary to keep the poor downtrodden.

The rest is done by the media, cheerleaders of globalization, reassuring us that the status quo is both inevitable and good. Among media myths: The U.S. is the most generous nation on earth. In terms of gross national income it is next to last among developed countries.