The high cost - Front Page - employee training - Brief Article - Editorial

T+D, June, 2002 by Haidee E. Allerton

Training can be expensive, as we learn in our cover story, "What Things Cost." Grown-up toys are pricey, too, especially when they first come out. It's hard to believe now, but VCRs cost about $600 when they entered the marketplace. If you have patience, the big flat-screen TV will drop below $1000 eventually. But then, some more desirable techno-crafted TV will become available-and cost too much for most consumers.

I can remember when going to a movie in a theatre cost 50 cents; ditto the price per pound of ground beef. My first house cost $34,000-four bedrooms in Montclair, New Jersey, only a brief stroll from the commuter train to New York. You couldn't touch that house now for under $600,000, I'll wager. Women's shoes cost a lot: Manolo Blanik thinks nothing of charging $400 for a pair of backless, toeless strappy pumps with heels so high you can't actually walk in them. Men's pastimes tend to require a lot of green--golf, for example.

Some things that are comforting cost a lot: Spa Day of Beauty, $350. Big, fluffy down comforters, $350. Mashed potatoes, not so costly. Lying in a hammock snoozing on a warm day, free. However, lying in a hammock snoozing on a warm day in Aruba....

Basics such as health care and auto insurance cost plenty. Repaving the driveway is a top-dollar expense and yet not as noticeable or satisfying as new carpeting or new granite kitchen counters.

Back to training. The cost of not doing it is much higher than whatever it costs to do it right. The same is true of spending money on membership to a gym, and then not going regularly. The results of such investments speak for themselves.

So, perhaps what a thing costs is not as much about dollars and cents as about what pleasure, learning, or other benefit you receive from it. The cost of receiving T D, for instance, works out to just a few dollars an issue. Worth the price? That's for the payer to determine.

Haidee E. Allerton

Editor