/the-hidden-costs-of-buying-on-the-cheap

The Hidden Costs of Buying on the Cheap - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/the-hidden-costs-of-buying-on-the-cheap.html

Mysterious origins are a hidden cost of cheap things. To spend a day in the diverse stores of New York — from the working-class area of Flatlands to the gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope to the moneyed Upper East Side — is to encounter yet another line dividing the prosperous from the poor.

To have money today is often to acquire the right to know which person knitted your sweater or which farm bred the pigs in your chorizo. To be without money is to buy from a placeless netherworld and be told to take it or leave it, no questions asked.