The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization

By Gordon Laird

A brilliant investigation into the true cost of our bargain economy — and the end of consumerism as we know it

Ours is the age of discount: we want more, cheaper, better. But the result is low wages, urban blight, environmental damage, labour abuses, a cookie-cutter model of progress, and now an international economic crisis. With an eye for documentary storytelling and investigative detail, Gordon Laird traces the bargain from its humble dollar-store origins to its place as global juggernaut. From Alberta’s tar sands to China’s factories, from Las Vegas to the Arctic Circle, a single question emerges: how will we survive the bargain?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9781551993287

Gordon Laird

Gordon Laird is a journalist who has been featured on CNN and NPR, and in Mother Jones, among many others, and has been a features writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review. Winner of several Canadian National Magazine Awards and named “one of the best and best-informed minds in the world” by The Globe and Mail, Laird is Media Fellow emeritus at the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. He is the author of The Price of a Bargain. He lives in Calgary.