Why We're Cheap

There are nicer words for it. Frugal. Economical. Cost-cutting. Fiscally responsible. But many people wear the word cheap as a badge of honor. Once a pejorative to those who refused to pay bucks for "quality", I've seen many a friend who call themselves cheap. Miserly is, of course, still far too mean-spirited, too bah-humbuggish for common use. But cheap suggests "I saved money, and sure it ain't great, but it's good enough".

However, despite the few out and proud cheap Americans, we don't have this notion ingrained in our bones like our fellow world citizens. My parents were in Taiwan and recounted a story of an all you can eat buffet. The cheap Taiwanese patrons were distressed that the restaurants would make money off them ("how dare they!") and would therefore make one final round to the buffet table, fill up on food, then leave it on the table, willing to waste the food so the restaurant would not take advantage of the cost of the buffet.

But the restaurant used their cheapness against the customers. They proclaimed that any additional food left at the table would be weighed, and the excess uneaten food would be charged a penalty. The previous system had no penalty, and so in the war to be cheap to the point of malice, the customer had some incentive to waste food. However, with the penalty in place, the customer's incentive was to eat as much food as possible (to make the most use of the money), and yet no more (to avoid the penalty).

Stores recently began charging Taiwanese for each plastic bag used at a store. This reduced the use by some 80 percent, again, perhaps appealing to the cheapness of people (in case you can't imagine what happened, a solution is to bring in your own bags, made of, say, burlap or such, and reuse that bag over and over, cleaning it as needed).

Indians, being a bartering society, tend to also be cheap, partly due to lack of income. Bartering and saving allows the relative poor to stretch their rupees (often called "bucks") over longer time. For example, tipping in India is rather uncommon. If a restaurant would require tipping, they would find themselves without customers, who go to another restaurant that doesn't require tipping. Pretty soon, tipping is practically unheard of.

Much like Brits who are flabbergasted that one has to tip for beer in the US, Indians are flabbergasted that there is an additional (optional!) surcharge for service in the US. Doesn't the cost of the food cover the payment for the wait staff? Why give even more money? Ridiculous! (In general, I concur, because it lacks any incentive to the waiter to do the job better).

When gas prices went up in the US, did we carpool more? Did we take public transport more? No. We went on driving as usual, grumbling that we had to pay more, but unwilling to sacrifice the convenience of getting to where we want in a reasonable amount of time. Thus, I'm not convince IKEA's strategy of charging five cents a plastic bag, clearly meant to encourage customers to use their own bags, will fly as well in the US.

I'm sure IKEA has done some research, and is likely to provide other incentives to convince Americans to try getting their own bags, but Americans are lazier more than they are cheap, and are willing to pay for that laziness. I used to use any ATM I could find, because I was too lazy to find a free one. But then I got even lazier and found a bank that would cover foreign ATM costs so I was willing to switch so I could continue my habit of going to any ATM to get money.

We Americans may say we're cheap, but honestly, it ain't even close.