SwBratcher's Posts

I just got an email from Ruell, of Well Fed Neighbor Alliance. It contained most of the following and more. Look into the organization if you haven't already.

Ruell points out that the job situation is not only bad, it seems to be getting worse.

He goes on to ask how this could be?

We are told we are in recovery. We are told that the banks we bailed out are, once again, making record profits. We were told to expect to see recovery in 4th quarter 2010, then summer 2011. Now recovery is scheduled for late 2012.

Fact is that the "recovery" is going to be, like the last three, Job Negative. This means, like the last three recoveries, we will never put back the jobs that were lost during the downturn.

To return to pre-downturn employment, we would have to add 300,000 jobs per month for the next 5 years. This would put back the jobs lost in the last downturn, but not the two before this. All you have to do is the math to realize there are people that want to work that haven't in a very long time.

Bottom line is efficiency dictates that we strive to do more with less. That's exactly what is happening. Global economy prices continue to fall. When you hear that they are rolling back prices on TV, they don't advertise supporting your economy to create jobs, increase quality, improve health, or their plan for helping your future. They are just milking your attention by ROLLING BACK PRICES.

Meanwhile, you and others are unemployed. More will become unemployed and ultimately, one must imagine that we reach a point where products are incredibly cheap but no one has the money to buy them. If no one has the money to shop big box cut-rate pricing, they surely don't have money to buy a house, pay for a service, buy a car, pay for healthcare, or healthy food.

Why does anyone think this is okay? There should be an alarm going off in your head.

I like getting these emails from Ruell. They are healthy reminders not of crappy times, but of what I can do as one member of a community to create a buffer from the collapse that is happening around us.

We all can see that things are not right, not good, and not sustainable for even a generation more. If you can't tell where your supplies are coming from, you are a slave to your dependence on people and companies that you cannot see or influence. This isn't healthy if we want to retain any level of individual independence and political freedom, no matter which side of the political party fence your political views have landed you.

An economy starts at the food. Local food is one, if not THE, way back. If we demand LOCALLY PRODUCED food in our LOCALLY OWNED groceries, restaurants, schools and hospitals, we would retain hundreds of millions of dollars, that are currently LEAVING our economy. Keeping those dollars in a localized economic cyclical spend will create incentive for investment in processing, manufacturing, and more. This demands the filling of jobs to deliver the labor those processes require... see?

When you demand local, they grow local, produce local, process local, deliver local, employ local, so you earn local, eat local, and prosper locally. This is cyclical. Parts of the cycle are long and don't happen over night, so it is imperative that the demand be created in a heavy way NOW.

There is a local grocer that just popped up in downtown Springfield. Go there, ask if they have local meat, local dairy, local fruits and veggies? Ask what farm they came from. Ask how you can tell what is local and if they use the Well Fed Neighbor badge for local products. If they have nothing local to offer, ask if they have an email list that you can be included on so that you can be notified when they have local produce you can purchase. Then leave.

Understand that every dollar is a vote. If you buy a dime's worth of anything that isn't local, you aren't showing that your wishes matter, and they lack the motivation to listen. Constrict your spending on all products, food or otherwise made out of area. If you need a hammer, find one at a yard sale or on craigslist or post that you'd like to buy someone's spare hammer in an area of local minded individuals like the wellfedneighbor.com forums and ning community.
Every dollar is a vote, so vote local. That is the essence of what Ruell is talking about when he says to create demand.

Here is the WFNA badge that I mentioned above: