Real Cost Of Things

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The Real Cost of Things In his article “The Political Economy of Twinkies: An inquiry into the Real Cost of Things,” Richard Robbins discusses how the price of a Twinkie costs a mere $1.00 in the supermarket; however, that small price does not even come close to the real value – cost – of the Twinkie. So many factors go into the production of a Twinkie that consumers never see in the price of their delicious afternoon snack. Hidden costs of each ingredient in a Twinkie must first be examined, including the monetary and non-monetary expenses that go towards producing and distributing those ingredients, and then accounted for respectively. The price a consumer pays at the checkout of their local Wal-mart or Target never includes the costs producers hide – most notably is the costs that derive from the underpayment of labor. Robbins magnifies this hidden cost through the main ingredient of Twinkies: cane sugar. Robbins illustrates that sugar workers are among the most underpaid farm laborers in the world (Robbins). In addition to the actual labor costs, the expenditure of force necessary to discipline workers “to accept far less than their labor warrant” must be accounted for (Robbins). The case of the underpayment of sugar workers is only one example put forth by Robbins in his article. There are, in reality, many more hidden costs to look at; ergo, the $1.00 one pays in the supermarket differs hugely from the “actual price” of the Twinkie. Hiding all these costs from consumers is a practice major corporations have upheld for years: they distance themselves from the processes used to manufacture and distribute their products (Robbins). Instead of producing honest products in the United States, major companies obscure the real cost of commodities by geographically distributing these costs as widely as possible, over as many countries as possible. The hard
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