Ask any event planner: People don't value things that are free. A party without a cover charge might get 1,000 Facebook "likes" from potential attendees, but a talk that costs $10 will actually see 200 audience members show up.
Free is a fixed value, of course; the definitions of "cheap" and "expensive" are more subjective. The question of whether something is worth what it costs depends on an ever-changing host of factors.
These include, but aren't limited to, income, upbringing, profession and peers. Not to mention whether you've had the luxury of comparison shopping for a new fridge or are frantically perusing websites because the old one has expired, loudly, in the middle of the night and its contents are spoiling in real time and a small child is throwing a fit because he wants to drink the stinky milk you've just pulled out of it. A $300 difference matters, sure, but so does the delivery date, and whether the appliance can even fit through the door of your narrow rowhouse.
A depressed dollar is causing Canadians to delineate the lines between wants and needs, and I've been thinking about how we assign value. I've been watching two unquestionable needs in particular – food and water – and the conversations about them, and thinking about the stories we tell ourselves about what things are worth.
So, food: It's pricier than it used to be, in part because of the dollar, and in part because El Nino has hit the regions that grow winter produce. In news stories and on social media, Canadians are complaining about broccoli being "too rich for my blood" or ugly bananas costing more than pretty ones used to. I even heard of one grocery store putting up apologetic signs about the cost of unattractive vegetables, as though the manager on duty didn't do their makeup properly.
There's a sense of entitlement being revealed in this conversation. The cost of food in southern Canada is still relatively low. According to Statistics Canada, in 2013 food costs accounted for about 14 per cent of the average Canadian family's budget, down from about 19 per cent in 1969, and far less than people pay in less stable countries (in Pakistan, the figure was 42 per cent in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture).
That doesn't mean adjusting to current costs is easy, especially not for the four million Canadian households facing food insecurity even before the dollar plunged. It does mean that higher prices aren't necessarily a price gouge.
It also means that when something is affordable – or "cheap" – the real cost is often invisible, or passed on to other people. Even though my Brussels sprouts budget may have gone through the roof, the undocumented Latin American workers in California's fields don't get higher wages, which was also an issue when bananas were 69 cents a pound.
That poor people pay the costs of systemic "affordability" is also the message coming out of Flint, Mich., where a long-brewing water crisis is finally capturing widespread attention. About two years ago, the state government decided to save money by changing the city's water supply from Detroit to the polluted Flint River, exposing residents – who are largely poor, and largely black – to both iron and lead. Rashes and hair loss were the immediate effects; deaths from legionnaires' disease are the most frightening.
What's happening in Flint is infuriating, but Canada can't throw any stones: About 100, or 20 per cent, of First Nations reserves have boil-water advisories at any given time, and in some places they have lasted a decade or more.
Canada seems awash in clean, affordable water, but a closer look shows a number of dry spots. There are melting glaciers, and sewage is being dumped into drinking sources. From coast to coast, private companies are bottling millions of litres of publicly owned water, then selling it back to us, usually in chemical-leaching plastic.
Yet, it's difficult to get Canadians worked up about water; most of us are just too used to it being cheap (and safe) and we've been spoiled into undervaluing it. But all signs point to water becoming pricier relatively soon, at which point I'm sure many will complain, as though using more than twice as much water as people in Europe do is a birthright.
Keeping control of your budget is never fun, but be honest about whether the current financial reckoning is causing a clawing back of your needs, or simply wants.
If the words "cheap" or "expensive" come to mind, please consider tacking on this rejoiner: "Compared with what?"