Consumers all got cheaper jeans, yes, but what did that matter to the people who had once stitched them if they were now out of work and couldn’t afford new clothes? The global economy created winners and losers, Bassett Furniture CEO Rob Spilman told me, explaining the dismissal of some eight thousand furniture workers from his payroll. “It was that or perish,” he said. “At the end of the day, we are not a social experiment.
