All this shopping recently got me to thinking
I always cringe a bit when I see things like this, especially when people outside of the industry see it. It makes the clothing industry look completely evil, but markups exist in EVERY business out there. Otherwise it’s not a business. I can make a graph about how many pennies it cost to produce the alcohol you’re paying $10.00 for at a bar, or how you theoretically are overcharging your consulting employer by 100% because you are not producing a physical product.
Please remember that markups exist so people like me and those that are working to produce these products can make a living. We to need to pay bills, buy food and pay people we employ.
I’m glad someone weighed in on this. Infographics like this can be way too misleading. I have a dog in this fight, so it’s hard to take my opinion as unbiased, but ‘markup’ is kind of a pejorative term. The idea that markups like this only exist in the fashion industry is ludicrous. Look at Apple.
How much should a designer get paid for designing something? How much would you want to get paid to sew the same thing over and over again for 5 days a week? What about the people who work in the warehouse, packing and shipping everything? They need to get paid, as do the drivers, the lawyer that helped right the terms of sale and return policies, etc., etc., etc. If you ordered the item online, what about the web developer, the credit card processor, bandwith fees, and domain name ownership?
Things like this just beg more questions than provide any real answers. Maybe a t-shirt should cost more than $6.70 to produce. What is a living wage? More importantly, what’s a wage that you would take for making something? Maybe t-shirts shouldn’t cost 15-20 dollars because it demonstrates that someone down the line isn’t getting paid fairly.
To be honest that “$6.70 a shirt” price is only going to keep going up. And not just because of inflation. And it should. The rising middle class in China and other developing countries aren’t going to swallow getting paid a few dollars on the hour for too much longer. It’s the same reason why we don’t manufacture things like this in the United States anymore - people want to get paid enough to not only survive, but enjoy their lives.
No one likes hearing justifications for things they find ‘overpriced’. But when’s the last time someone asked you how much your work is worth? Or questioned how much you get paid
A ‘Don’t Like’ Button?
In a way, this Hater-means-admirer twist is appropriate for our Ironic Age.
“My impression of the current anti-Hater trend is that at best it represents a desire to overcome negativity to express a positive message,” says Virginia Tech’s Brian Britt, “and that at worst it depicts Haters as anyone ‘we’ don’t like. In this vein, we are told to ‘hate Haters’ and not to be too critical or to think too hard about what’s wrong in the world.”
Society, Britt says, “should deal with Haters by balancing the competing values of freedom of speech on the one hand, and the safety and dignity of the public on the other.”
And if Haters sometimes act as “serious critics of the status quo whose behaviors fall short of hurting other people,” Britt says, “then they can be valuable to a free and democratic society.”
From another angle, Britt points out that the term “hate speech” is now a slur in its own right. “We hear politicians accuse each other of ‘hate speech,’ and in a culture that prizes itself on civility and niceness — however superficial — there is no worse insult or act of hate than to accuse someone of being a Hater.”
And this is where the fomenting culture of hate speech and Haters turns back on itself, Britt adds. “The logic goes like this: Hate is bad, so we hate hate, but in hating hate, we become Haters ourselves.”
Hank Stuever, TV critic at The Washington Post, may have a solution. After reviewing I Hate My Teenage Daughter in December, Stuever posted this observation on his Facebook wall: “One thing I didn’t get around to saying is how much I don’t like the prolific use of the word ‘hate’ in our conversations now. As in ‘I hate those cupcakes.’ Or ‘I hate when people park like that.’ “
He adds, “Whatever happened to ‘I don’t like’?
A Recent History Of Haters
Up against the contemporary cultural movements of self-confidence and self-esteem, the motives of people who hate are called into question, leading to Facebook pages with titles such as “If You Have Haters, You Must Be Doing Something Right.”
The reasoning: Haters must be jealous or envious. So they are actually, in the zeitgeist, intensified fans. It may be a topsy-turvy take on the idea of hate, but for many self-confident people, it’s a useful one. The word has been flipped — like the way “sick” can mean “cool.”
This creative spin on Haters has its origins in the music world. Hip-hop historian Marcus Reeves, author ofSomebody Scream!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, explains that the word “Hater” — as it’s often used today — is derived from the term “Player Hater.”
That phrase first surfaced in the late 1990s, as hip-hop was becoming mainstream, Reeves says. “It was popularized by Notorious B.I.G. who, before his death, was on the verge of blowing up the MC-as-pimp-player-hustler persona.”
As rappers and rhythm-and-blues singers began to be seen “as working-class hustlers or urban players of a system set up to keep them out,” Reeves says, “Player Hater was the term given to those who work against or criticize the make-it-by-any-means-necessary ethos of a successful rapper or any successful person.”
The phrase was eventually shortened to Hater, Reeves says, encompassing “anyone who criticized — even constructively — a person’s success or business practices.”
The problem, he points out, was that the term “began to be used to shut down any criticism or examination of how one obtained success, like a rapper glorifying drug-dealing under the guise of showing listeners how real the streets are.”
How To Talk To Girls At Parties: 'Haters' Are Going To Hate This Story
Haters are here. And there. And everywhere. And the word “hate” is in the air.
Fox has a new sitcom: I Hate My Teenage Daughter. A recent issue of Us magazine tells us “Why Scarlett Johansson Hates Blake Lively.” Psychology Today explains “Why We Hate Airport Security.” Dick Meyer, formerly of…
(Source: NPR)
