Cheap is a concept that allows you to qualify that which has a reduced or lower price than usual. For example: “These pants are very cheap, you should take the opportunity to buy them”, “This restaurant is not so cheap”, “We are paying a very cheap rent for this house since its owner is a friend of my father”.
What is understood by cheap varies according to the time and place. Suppose a country is going through a process of inflation, where prices tend to rise more than 5% per month. In January, a phone that sells for 500 pesos can be expensive. However, six months later, that same phone can be offered for 800 pesos. This makes a price of 500 pesos for the product in question now cheap.
According to DigoPaul, the cheap is also linked to the purchasing power. In a nation whose inhabitants have an average monthly salary of $ 1,000, a bottle of wine that sells for $ 2 can be cheap. That same product, at the same price, will be very expensive in a region with an average salary of $ 30 a month.
To determine if something is cheap, it must be compared with other elements of its class: it cannot be said that all products that are sold for 10 pesos are cheap, to name one case. A 10-peso candy can be very expensive, while a kilogram of beef at the same price is very cheap.
Therefore, one of the first criteria that we can use to determine whether an item is cheap or expensive is to compare it with others of the same type, taking into account various brands. Very often we find a product whose price does not reflect at all the quality of its materials or the labor required for its manufacture, but rather presents an excess that seems to have no explanation, and the cause is usually the use of intellectual properties pre-existing ones that require the payment of rights, as happens with the merchandising of famous films.
Similarly, it is almost impossible to determine if a work of art is the right price, since behind it lies a series of questions such as the fame of its creator, the market in which it is sold, its age and its rarity.. For this reason, the same music disc may seem cheap to an admirer of the author but expensive to a detractor who would not pay a penny for it.
The services are easier to evaluate, thanks to the experiences and opinions of the clients. However, personal assessments also come into play here that cloud the judgment and can lead to unobjective verdicts. In short, it is not valid to argue that an Internet service is expensive simply because we do not have enough money to hire it or that it is cheap because our old provider charged us more.
In the language colloquial, it is said that something is cheap when you have poor quality or low value: ” I do not want to hear any more of your cheap excuses: get to work and stop wasting time”, “The cheap rock of this kind of bands I find very boring ”, “ The young man tried to convince the policeman with a cheap argument but was unsuccessful ”.
The arguments cheap, as shown in the above examples, are those that have no basis and can be dismantled without much effort to make clear that this is false or manipulated data. Faced with the accusation of not fulfilling their obligations in a responsible manner, a person who excuses himself in this way cannot justify his attitude, in the same way that after a road violation we cannot save ourselves from a fine with an unfounded history.
