Did you realize that for every two jobs a huge national retailer brings to your town, three jobs are lost? Yes. As local businesses, unable to compete with WalMarts and Home Depots and Applebees, close down, more jobs are lost than gained.
Have you ever noticed that megaretailers raise their bargain prices once most of the local competition has been driven out of business? Check prices at your nearest surviving Ace Hardware (you’ll have to drive a ways to find it)-you may be surprised to find Home Depot’s prices are actually higher on many products.
A study of the effect of chain stores on the economy of Andersonville, a suburb of Chicago, showed that for every $100 in consumer spending with a locally owned firm, $68 remained in the Chicago economy, but only $43 remained from $100 spent in a chain store. The same study showed that 70% of residents preferred to shop in local stores and 80% preferred shopping in traditional urban business districts to big boxes. Nationwide, experience has shown that chain stores drain tax revenues through ill-considered subsidies, leave shopping areas blighted, and actively work to drive local companies out of business. Meanwhile, the carbon cost of pointlessly hauling food and other goods around the world continues to skyrocket. And as we know, we no longer can trust that our food is safe, nor our pet food, nor our children’s toys…
It is past time to fight back.
Stalking the Local Merchant
I was pleased to find a fight-back weapon here in my state: a coalition of businesses has come into being to foster local commerce and to encourage people to shop locally. The retail landscape here has become so homogenized it’s hard to find local stores. Most of our wonderful independent bookstores were hounded out of business years ago, people mysteriously developed a penchant for taste-alike restaurants, our fine local hardware shops closed their doors within months of Home Depot’s arrival, and now Phoenix, like every other major American city, looks just like every other major American city. Cookie-cutter commerce has brought us cookie-cutter cities full of cookie-cutter people. And so, it is excellent to come across an organization that will tell you where to find local shopping.
So far, I haven’t located a national clearinghouse or umbrella organization for such groups, but a little googling suggests they’re all over the country. As you might expect, smaller municipalities, recognizing that chain stores threaten their job base and the very character of their towns, are resisting vigorously. Taylor, Texas, for example, has a lively shop-local movement; there’s one in central Illinois and another in Cape Cod.
But larger cities are also starting to join battle: Salt Lake City’s Vest Pocket Business Coalition complements Utah’s statewide organization. New Orleans urges citizens to patronize local businesses, and Brooklyn has an active shop-local movement.
No doubt there are many more. Visits to just these few websites will show you the endless good reasons to buy on the local economy as much as you can, and most of them list locally owned businesses. Try googling “shop local” and the name of your city or state.
The Costs, the Benefits
Does shopping local cost more? Possibly, since megacorporations have no qualms about undercutting local competition-at least until the competition is gone. But we’ve already seen what abandoning our local economies for huge box stores has done to the quality of life in our cities: we have lost what makes our towns our towns, as every city in America has come to look alike. We’ve lost jobs and wages. We’ve lost nearby shopping and quality neighborhoods. As the cost of fuel has risen, the cost of flying and trucking food from far-away megasuppliers is making the most ordinary food items unaffordable. And now, in the era of globalization ushered in by vast corporate interests and their political allies, we are enjoying unsafe food and toys, engineered obsolescence of big-ticket items, less and less choice and variety in the products offered to us, longer drives to fewer stores…to say nothing of carefully orchestrated corporate invasion of our privacy.
Penny wise and pound foolish, with a vengeance! Some things are worth paying for. One of those things is our way of life.
I for one intend to start shopping local whenever I can reasonably do so. I hope you’ll all join me at your local merchants’ stores.
It’s simply good for America.
2 Comments left on iWeb site:
BeThisWay
Excellent article!We just discovered our local Ace Hardware, and it’s less than three miles away!Husband and I both enjoyed browsing their shelves, and the prices were sometimes lower, sometimes higher, and sometimes the same as the Big Boxes.The customer service blew the Big Boxes away…
I much prefer the local farmers market to the big grocery stores, even though they are pseudo-local.Local, neighborhood restaurants are often sooo much betterthan the chains.I think people like to eat at chains so they know what to expect.Levels of cleanliness and quality are assumed to be good.
Sometimes I have to choose price, but when they are comparable I’m going to make the effort to shop locally whenever possible.
Jeff
I agree!This is a great article and highlights the most important reason to shop local and support American businesses … because it keeps jobs, and our money, in the States where it belongs.
