George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.
For two years, this column has discussed the critical nature for local communities to encourage local spending the best they can. During this Christmas season and after nearly two years of COVID-19, this has become more critical. I cannot stress this enough. This is indeed a case of either surviving or becoming obsolete as a community.
One cannot under-estimate the true value of spending locally. At the risk of repeating myself, I will share an example from a community of 5,000 residents.If each resident spent just $25 more each month locally that may have been spent elsewhere, the community and your neighbors would see huge results.
That small monthly commitment to your community would equal $125K monthly, $1,500,000 yearly and nearly $5,000,000 each year when factoring the compounded impact of dollars spent locally. How many businesses will that keep open? How many jobs will that save? How many tax dollars will that generate? We can simplify by saying for every dollar a resident of your community spends online, out-of-town, or with a corporate chain, that is between $3 and $7 not being spent in your community.
Local communities can’t look to the state of national government to help them out. When COVID restrictions and mandates were enacted, small local businesses were under siege from our government through forced business closures and mandates.
One need not be a rocket scientist to understand this assault was on nearly every small community in the country. Large corporate chains were allowed to remain open for business while many small local businesses deemed non-essential were forced to conform. Since when is providing support for one’s family deemed non-essential?
What government failed to understand is when small businesses go under, so do their incomes, employment base, the supplies they order and so forth. Ultimately, after all the free handouts dry up, it reaps disaster on not only the community along with their small business base, but on large corporate chains who will also suffer as no one will ultimately have income to purchase their products and services.
The numerical reasons for keeping dollars local has been well established and is beyond dispute. The proof is readily apparent across the country. Most need not travel very far from home to see a nearby town that was once prosperous only to become a shell of what it once was. They are now shells of themselves because among many reasons, they supported Wall Street and their Dollar General stores in lieu of their own Main Street.
Unlike in the past, the current situation of local communities losing dollars to out-of town corporations, chains, and online entities is accelerating very rapidly. Dollars are leaving local communities at an alarming rate due to online buying habits formed during the COVID pandemic. This trend is unlikely to subside anytime soon. With this acceleration, towns that are now doing well, will do less well in the near future. Towns that have been struggling will struggle even more. Towns teetering on the brink will be pushed off into the abyss.
As the outflow of dollars accelerates, the impact on the local community will becomes more apparent. Civic engagement and volunteering decrease, poverty rates increase, more local businesses go under, local jobs are lost, housing prices decrease, tax base dwindles, crime rates increase and the list goes on.
I cannot stress this enough; communities must act quickly If this issue isn’t on the radar of local community leaders, it must be placed on that radar. Once on the community radar, communities need to quickly assemble a task force with the sole purpose of addressing this critical issue.
To be effective, this task force must include city leaders, chamber and/or Main Street representation, business leaders, media representation, civic club and economic development leaders, and whomever else makes sense. As a team, they must brainstorm potential solutions, possible community initiatives, citywide promotions, and other tactics.
Proactive communities can tackle and impact these problems. It is being done every day around the country. The “Building Main Street, not Wall Street” weekly column has provided literally dozens of ideas over the years and will continue to do so. It isn’t an easy task, but nothing worthy of great effort usually is. I implore you, don’t miss the boat, this is an issue that isn’t going away and will only worsen in the coming years.
John A. Newby, of Pineville, Missouri is the author of the "Building Main Street, Not Wall Street " weekly column and CEO of Truly-Local, LLC, dedicated to assisting communities create excitement, energy and combine synergies with their local media where LOCAL is often lost to corporately-owned entities and the internet. He can be reached at info@Truly-Localllc.com.
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December 07, 2021 at 02:52AM
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Local spending may be matter of life and death - Manistee News Advocate
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