Shop Locally on Black Friday
Whatever one thinks of Occupy Wall Street, everyone should follow their advice for Black Friday: Shop locally. Patronize mom-and-pop stores instead of chains and Big Boxes.
As a downtown resident of a small town — for the past seven-plus years — I’ve been hearing this message constantly. It’s probably less obvious if you live in a large city or the suburbs.
The numbers I’ve been hearing over and over are: when you buy from a locally-owned store, sixty cents of every dollar you spend stays in your community. When you patronize a Big Box store — Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. — only six cents of every dollar stays in your community. For non-Big-Box chain stores, the figure is somewhere between those two extremes.
Now that the economy is in the tank, and a larger share of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in fewer hands than ever before, this message is more important than ever. Buy local.
Remember — politicians won’t help you. They’re part of the one percent. You have to vote with your dollars whenever possible. If you hate Wall Street, don’t keep your money in one of the big banks. If you hate Wal-Mart, don’t shop there.
Happy Black Friday.
posted by Tom Harper @ 1:11 AM
6 Comments:
Sadly there aren't very many local stores left. Try finding a local hardware store these days. And even if you do most of the things are made in China.
Lastly take a look at where your food comes from. So much of it comes from Con Agra produced with foreign meats and produce and packaged in those red states with cheap labor.
I try as hard as I can to do local shopping for everything, even if it means paying a bit more for it. I get my produce from the farmers market, get my meat from the butcher and so on. You could not give me enough money to wander out among the shoppers today.
I've heard on the news, Walmart has had some goings on all over CA. Not that far from us in San Leandro, a shooting over midnight purchases, pepper spraying in Los Angeles area. Nope, not a chance I would go out today, or in the near future.
In our town there are not a lot of places to shop. Since WalMart moved in about 15 years ago, our downtown has pretty much dried up. I'll be attempting to get as many gifts as possible through local dealers this Christmas. Instead of WalMart, we try to get as many things as we can at Bi-Mart, which is at least a NW-owned company... but sometimes we end up in WalMart because it's the only place in town one can get some things any more.
Demeur: We have a few local hardware stores in our area, but God knows what country their merchandise was made in. When it comes to food -- sometimes it's best not to know.
Jess: The more local shopping, the better. I heard about some of those Black Friday shopping brawls. It seems to be getting worse every year.
Snave: Sorry to hear Wal-Mart wrecked your downtown. We have a Wal-Mart about 2 miles outside of downtown -- they just converted to a Supercenter about a year ago -- but the downtown is still thriving. In fact, every time I drive by, the Wal-Mart parking lot doesn't even look very full. And that's what I like to see.
I shop regularly at my local farmer's market. All my produce is local.
Erik
Erik: That's excellent. That's a win win for everybody (except Big Ag).
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