Now that we are certain the light at the end of the tunnel was the tail lights of the train that ran us over, we can begin to plan the recovery of our economy. While there is no arguing the creeping inflation and rising unemployment, the other undeniable fact is Americans needs to get a hold of their fears and get back to work. And I’m not tlking about the 9 to 5 we all cherish, but the work of rebuilding our communities.
As we look at our country from a county to county basis we find two persistent problems. First, the people who normally buy products and services don’t have any money and secondly, we have to turn around our sinking consumer confidence. With the slow down in the economy, businesses are laying off employees in an attempt to remain open, but is that truly what is needed? What most fail to realize is every employee is some business’s customer. You may be able to save your bottom line, but what damage did you cause in the community? Also, this fear of losing your job causes a pessimism that keeps our money in our pockets "just in case". We do without the pleasurable things in the hopes that if the bottom falls out we can some how sustain ourselves for a while. But who are we kidding, if you don’t have at least six months of salary saved, you won’t make it anyway.
All of our fates are tied together on the local level and the heartbeat of America is the pulsing of economic prosperity town by town, city by city. We have to reestablish our "Buy Local" mentality, which keeps the local small businesses hiring, which keeps the employees spending, which causes growth and so on. Even the federal government knows this to be true, which is evidenced by the small business stimulus loans currently being offered. Under this program small business owner can get a 0% interest loan of $35,000 to help save their business www.sba.gov.
There has been much debate of the theory of "Trickle down" economics. What I am proposing is just the opposite. In the "Buy Local" business model, funds trickle up to the larger markets as the smaller markets grow faster than capacity. For example, if acounty that had 10% unemployment was able to reduce that number to 5%, then the need for additional resources would increase as more demand from the employed grows. This increase would cause more suppliers to appear, which would add more jobs, which causes hire wages, which draws more people to the region, which causes more retailers to open, which causes more jobs, which causes a need for more housing, which causes more jobs….are you starting to get the point?
The one downside in this theory is there will be casualties. Invariably a switch in economic theory will cause a percentage of people to get caught under the wheels of progress. There will be some that spend their savings to try to get the local economy going and not have enough resources to take advantage of the growth. There will be those who don’t believe and will continue to live their lives in fear and finally, there are those who don’t care, they have enough money, screw everyone else.
In either respect, we have reached the end of our democratic republic and change is inevitable. We have to decide what derivation of socialism, marxism, or facism we can endure, but in the meantime, those of us who like things just the way they are can get together and fight the imperial government one city, county, or state at a time.