Why should I shop local?

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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

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because it increases the speed money circulates at in the local economy.

Let’s say you work as a teacher in a school, buying a sack of potatoes which was sourced locally would mean supporting a local farmer, whom would be using a local mechanic for his tractor maintenance and whom would also be purchasing his supplies locally. Each of those people would be paying taxes, locally, and those taxes would support the local schools.

So part of the money would be going back in to your pockets because you’re a teacher. And then you could spend it on a carpenter to help fix your house and the cycle would continue.

What this would mean would be an increased amount of jobs in your area, which would reduce the poverty rate and crime rate and boost public services.

If on the other hand you purchased a sack of potatoes produced in another state, you would be sending the money over to that state so it could be circulated there and create jobs there.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I think at least part of it stems from a modern lack of connection some people feel that elicits nostalgia for a (somewhat imagined) idyllic past when much more of what we consumed had to be produced locally — and what couldn’t be produced locally was at least sold by a small, local retailer so that everything you used had a face to it.

There’s an environmental aspect to it. All else equal, an item that travels a shorter distance will leave behind a smaller footprint.

And finally, an economic aspect: Not shopping locally will mean your town will stop producing some goods and focus more on others. However, if that focused on good rapidly falls out of fashion or starts being made w/automation, the town may feel a setback it may never recover from. Staying unfocused and diverse makes this less likely, and shopping locally helps that
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