The Cost of Living

I worked in a superstore in a past life, and I remember one day sitting on my break, up in the staff room overlooking the huge store and ‘seeing’ what would be included in the cost of each thing sold there: my wages, the wages of my manager, and her manager, and the senior managers on up the chain of command.

Then I saw more: the utility bill, the janitorial bill, the cost of those would be woven in of course, the cost of paying the lighting workers and janitorial staff and for all their supplies.

My trip down the rabbit hole kept going. I don’t honestly remember how it continued but it would have been something like this:

There was the cost of legal team who took care of legal stuff for the superstore, who had to pay THEIR utility bill and janitorial staff, and the what about the costs to cover paying the printing company (companies?) where the weekly sales fliers for all the branches of superstores across the country were printed. And THEIR utilities, janitorial staff, and legal teams.

The raise in pay to each worker in each of those places who asks for a raise and gets one (to help cover the cost of utilities or a legal team or childcare or the care of their aging parents) is added eventually to the cost of things.

The cost of the packaging in which all the things are shipped, and the cost of shipping them, the refrigeration of some things, the insulation of others, all these costs are melted into the cost of things.

The cost of dealing with the packaging materials once the contents are removed to be put on the superstore shelves, most of which are disposed of by companies contracted to deal with waste. Who charge for this according to their costs, including for their utilities, janitorial and legal teams.

The packaging waste.

Here my mind meets a boundary between the human costs and the costs to other-than-humans.

The waste. Does the cost of things I buy at superstore include paying the cost to other-than-humans of the waste produced to produce, transport and clean up after it all?

My mind goes to polluted rivers, lakes and oceans I’ve seen and smelled, and to smog and acid rain (does that fall still?) and to an article I once read about nano plastics turning up in breastmilk.

My mind goes to the lengths my off grid friends were going to to keep from contaminating the land they steward by asking pharmaceutical-ingesting visitors to piss and shit in the outhouse over which a food tree would not be planted, rather than making contaminated deposits to the humanure system, the contents of which would eventually be spread all about.

What is the cost to other-than-human and human life of the pharmaceuticals being flushed down the toilets at a superstore after helping keep workers and janitorial staff ‘fit’ to work?

I don’t think those costs are included in the cost of superstore merchandise.

These kinds of musings during my breaks from unpackaging stock, addressing customers questions (none of which were about the true cost of anything to anyone), cleaning up (the janitorial staff’s job descriptions didn’t cover tidying the stock), eventually contributed to my choosing to stop working for a superstore, or for any corporation.

Such musings continue to inform my personal experiments about noticing costs so as to decrease, if possible, the ways I contribute to the costs paid by other humans and other-than-humans for how I live.

What is the cost of the things that are produced to replace costly things?

Does an electric vehicle truly cost less than a fossil fuelled vehicle, when all things are considered?

I mean, what was the cost of all the components that made ‘that’ electric car, including the machines and workers used to mine the metal, plastic (fossil fuels), lithium (in its electric charge-carrying batteries), etc, including the janitorial and legal teams in each of the companies involved, of course. And the pharmaceuticals that went through the workers into the waters of the Earth?

What is the cost of all the to-go cups coated with wax and lidded with plastic, and all of the fumes from all of the perfumed clothes drier sheets spinning in all the smart-computer system protected houses that dry clothes that end up in shipping containers full of other second hand clothes that the first world can’t re-sell to itself?

For each bit of metal used in the supply chain there are the domino costs of mining and transporting and smelting and cooling and packaging and paperwork to move it along until it becomes a …?

Do you know about what THAT costs, the metal part? A more articulate person than I goes further into that (and elsewhere) in this article, written with a second part.

I am not speaking to the right or wrong, good or evil of any of this. I am looking at and scared about the consequences of not counting and paying the costs, and the ongoing consequences to that.

What has been missed here?

How do you feel about what has been mused on here?

I want to hear.

Love, Nicole