I see a lot of push towards shopping local and supporting the local economy. However, the large national brands provide the same product for cheaper and provide more jobs than your local producer. Why should I pay more for an essentially equivilant product?
In: Economics
The more you buy from Amazon, the richer Jeff Bezos gets, and the more Sam from Sam’s Hardware can’t afford to feed his daughter. Sam is your neighbor. Take care of Sam.
Because it supports the local economy. National brand stores send the profit back to corporate. Local store owners keep it local because they live there. Ideally it gets spent on other local businesses, building the economy and providing more revenue for public services like roads and such.
So you can virtue signal on social media that you are rich enough to pay more and how much you “care”
Firstly, it cuts down on carbon emissions. If you’re getting locally grown produce or locally made items, less pollution is created, because those items won’t need to be shipped across the country or imported. Secondly, by supporting Walmart and Amazon, you’re killing local businesses. Eventually, those businesses will no longer exist, and then the national chain will be free to raise prices because there is no competition. In the very long run, many of these national businesses will have invested enough in R&D to automate most of the low paying jobs, meaning many small towns will not only have no option but to shop at chain stores, but they will also be a wasteland for jobs.
Because what they do is that they drain money of a city and move on.
Imagine this:
You don’t buy local.
Business for local goes bad.
He packs up and probably gets hired at big one for a decent-low money.
After this happens to most locals, the big guy starts pushing up prices and keeps the wages low.
There is no other option but to buy from them.
When they see the people are running dry, they pack up and leave.
Now the economic state of the city is significantly worse compared to before.
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This is my understanding anyway