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 © J. McKenzie What is the true cost?by Jamie McKenzie(about author) |
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Feeling in need of a treat one afternoon, I stopped into a posh cafe/bakery where the apple turnover was listed as costing four dollars. When I went to pay, the price changed to $5.28. The machine offered a chance to tip the counter person, another dollar. This brought the true cost to over six dollars. I decided not to complete the purchase. Unfortunately, the true cost of things in life is often hidden. This is sometimes true when looking for a hotel on a site like Booking.com. A map pops up showing all the hotels in the neighborhood you’re interested in booking. The hotel listed for $150 a night often ends up costing something closer to $200 or $250 when you add up what they now call “destination fees” along with taxes and other costs.  ©Photosphere And then you're sitting with a doctor who is suggesting a surgical procedure. "How much will this cost?" you ask, and she answers, "You'll have to speak with Billing about that. It will depend on your insurance and other factors." It is often difficult to get a clear answer until after the procedure has been completed. Fortunately, the Federal "No Surprises Act" may protect people from unexpected medical bills, but the discussion of costs rarely occurs between doctor and patient.  © J.McKenzie How much will it cost to build this wall? When the Chinese started building what we now call "The Great Wall of China," it is unlikely anyone expected it to stretch for hundreds of miles or become one of the wonders of the world. It is also unlikely there was any kind of accurate prediction of the wall's total and actual cost in terms of gold spent and lives lost. The same could be said for the building of St. Petersburg in Russia or the Brooklyn Bridge. Such projects almost always cost more to complete than visionaries will promise at the outset. More than twenty workers died building the Brooklyn Bridge and some claim 30,000-100,000 died building St. Petersburg. Likewise, when proposing a wall along the southern border of the USA, one candidate famously promised the Mexicans would pay for its construction so the cost to the USA would be ZERO. We would hope that schools will equip students with the questioning and thinking skills to press for the real cost of things in their life, not being satisfied with the superficial and often misleading first answers they might encounter.
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