I'll never forget the feeling, as a child in the 1980's, of being one of the luckiest people in the world because I lived in the United States. It was during this time that one of the most popular Presidents of all time was in the white house, the Cosby show owned Thursday night primetime, and Michael Jackson was the King of Pop. I grew up in the suburbs near the Westside of Chicago. I grew up in a house full of political dialogue. I can recall numerous discussions, if you can politely call these arguments that, between my mother and grandfather about the military, welfare, and other poignant political topics.
One activity I begrudged as a child was shopping with my mother or grandmother, even though I was pretty effective at begging for toys and could usually get them to cave in. I’ll never forget one particular trip with my aunt and grandmother. We were in the car and they were discussing the ‘Made in America’ campaign that became popular in the mid 80’s. The concept of considering where a product was produced had never crossed my adolescent mind. The ensuing conversation involved my grandmother explaining why we need to buy American products instead of giving our jobs away to overseas factories. This made sense at the time…
Fast forward a few years to the early 90’s. I am in high school living in southern California. One of the popular talking points of this era (and still to this day) is ‘free trade’. It made sense to me; if we can get bananas from Guatemala cheaper, then our standard of living will improve. I didn’t see the rationale in taxing or putting up tariffs. I figured two American dollars a day was probably a pretty good wage for someone living in a third world country.
Fast forward a few more years. Now I am in college studying political science. It is around this time that the government first started formulating NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). I began reading and reading and reading and reading until I started to get a better understanding of the big picture. I discovered the reason those bananas from Guatemala were so cheap was not because of fair trade. It was the same story with the coffee bean pickers in Colombia, the miners in Chile, and the list can go on and on and on and on until you see that it reaches to all corners of the globe. Every culture, village, human has in some way been touched by ‘Globalization’.
It’s so important to shop at local retail for locally produced goods, because of the direct impact it has on you, your family and your community. Think of things this way: when you go to a large corporate retailer most of your community's wealth leaves your region and goes to international foreign investors all over the world. Most of these individuals probably have never heard of your town nor do they care anything about it. On the other hand when you shop at a local business your wealth stays in your community. This has a catalytic effect. When a local business does well, it allows for growth and expansion. This means more employees, more contractors, and many other jobs. This wealth keeps cycling through the local community raising everyone’s standards of living as well as your standard of living. But as soon as you spend that dollar at a large retailer that wealth vanishes from your community forever.
What I have come to realize over the years is that it’s not what they’re selling; it’s what you’re buying. We have the ability as ‘educated’ consumers to shape the market in any manner in which we choose. The ‘market’ does not have a mind of its own and will respond to whatever is most profitable. There are times when we need to look to ourselves for answers instead of expecting for the government to fix the problem.
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