Moot point for me. Many items, I literally CAN’T buy locally. Not anymore.
I don’t see where trying to help out your local main street merchants is tantamount to racism.
Faulty reasoning on the part of the author. The out-stretch of his argument is globalism, that that we should want to provide a benefit equally to everyone worldwide as much as we would like to benefit our own locality. Preferring the benefit of our own community and neighbors is not the same as reckoning other communities inferior. Just a very poorly thought out article in that respect.
“Buying local” for agriculture doesn’t work in California anymore—not with water restrictions forcing way too many farms to shut down. There is a real possibility that the Central Valley south of Modesto may start turning back into a desert again at the rate the water restrictions are going.
One big reason why it makes sense to "buy local" is that you do business with people who are more likely to do business with you.
If I'm a lawyer or accountant with a local office in a small town, I don't really care if the Home Depot located 10 miles (or even ten blocks) away offers a better deal on tools or building materials. I would rather go to the local hardware store for those things because Home Depot is never going to hire me for legal or accounting work.
Was in a restaurant yesterday. Big signs on the wall touting that the produce was all bought locally. Beautiful pictures of farmland and the produce from about 8 towns. Of course, none of these “local” farms were from my town or even from my state.
I always wonder about the “farmers markets” with organic produce in my area. Supposedly the produce is all from local sources as well. I suspect that much of it has been purchased locally from some of the Mexican stores that have really low prices, and then the labels removed for resale, and the produce magically transformed into “organic” produce.
That was Sam Walton’s basic premise ... American Made ... nothing in a Wal*Mart was manufactured outside the USA. Wonder what he would think now.
Buy stuff from people you’ll never even know on the other side of the world! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Send your dollars out of the country. Don’t support domestic production of anything you buy. Buy Chinese, that’s the way to a healthy US economy and personal financial stability.
This message brought to you by the multinational business chamber of commerce.
Because according to them, Americans are too lazy and stupid to make or grow things for themselves. And if they did, they refuse to work for slave wages and live in slums under fascist rule.