By Haddon Libby
If you could, would you help create more local jobs and improve our local economy?
Guess what? You can by simply shopping at local businesses instead of national chain businesses.
The reasoning behind this is fairly straight forward. Local businesses source more product locally. The highest paid employees – namely owners and key management – live locally. Local businesses typically give more to local charities as a percentage of their income. Local businesses typically pay more to their employees than their national competitors.
What would happen if each one of us spent $20 more each week at local businesses instead of national businesses?
Given that the Coachella Valley has approximately 350,000 year-round residents, we would end up spending an additional $364 million at local businesses. Given that local businesses spend, on average, three times more locally than their national competitors, this would translate into $109 million more circulating throughout the Coachella Valley. This $109 million would then be spent at other businesses creating even more economic stimulus for our region.
With more money in the local economy, businesses would hire more people. Lower unemployment and more people employed would result in higher real estate prices. Those higher real estate prices would translate into even more economic prosperity for all in the region. All of this would happen because, for example, you went to a local restaurant instead of a national chain. Your simple act of shopping locally would serve to create economic stimulus that creates an upward spiral of economic opportunities for you and your neighbors.
Conversely, spending your money at the national or online stores suck money out of our economy weakening the overall economic condition of the Coachella Valley.
Which businesses have the greatest positive impact on our economy? Businesses that produce whatever they make from local materials made by local people and exported to other places. The reason for this is because every sale improves the local economy at the maximum amount possible as virtually nothing had to be purchased from somewhere else. A good example of this in the Coachella Valley would be the growing of fruits and vegetables by local farmers.
By contrast, when you purchase something made somewhere else and sold to you by people who work and live somewhere else, all of the money that you spent leaves the local economy and goes to those people and businesses in other places. The best example of this would be when you purchase something online where the only local involvement is the delivery driver who is employed by a national delivery service. In this case, your purchase makes the region poorer.
When you go to a big box store like Walmart, only 15 cents of every dollar that you spend stays locally. The remaining 85 cents is split between the creators of those products (for example, China), executives of the company who reside somewhere else and their shareholders. Making that purchase even worse is that large companies like Walmart put many local merchants out of business. While a Walmart store will create new jobs for the local economy, those jobs are lowing paying jobs than the local jobs that were lost. Additionally, the American taxpayer has to dole out financial support of nearly $1,000 per Walmart employee or $1.3 billion annually as so many of their employees require financial assistance by state and federal agencies.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is dubbed Small Business Saturday. Wedged between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this shopping day began gaining widespread recognition when American Express added this promotion of consumerism to their advertising campaigns in 2010.
Help create jobs and improve the Coachella Valley economy by making every day a Buy Local Day.
