Again you're removing any of your personal responsibility and blaming some non-descript millionaire. What have YOU personally done to increase the local tax base so that teachers can have higher salaries? How many corporate chains have you given money to this month? Where did your food originate?
Instead of creating fictional boogeymen to allow you a free pass, spend some time changing your personal economics. Every bit helps. Hell, I recently found a sock and underwear manufacturer just fifty miles away!
I've wondered this myself. As efficiency increases, there simply won't be enough jobs for everyone to continue to enjoy the standard of living and consumption that we currently enjoy.
I really do hate when people just latch onto one sentence of an entire post and take it out of context. I do my part to help the unfortunate, with time, food, and finance. I make a very good salary, but I know full well the situation we are in is dire. Thinking the "boogeymen" are fictional is hilarious when we just had a financial meltdown due to people buying and selling 700 trillion dollars that didn't exist. Only to cripple the worlds economy. Being purely selfish, and they were all bailed out for doing so. So spare me the notion that I'm getting a free pass doing anything.
I admire your attitude to buy locally, however no, your personal economics is one part of the problem, and right now, a minuscule part. The cycle still goes. The demand is there for a better life, the "American Dream", and this equates to capitalism as tangible goods. Bigger homes, Brand Loyalty, and utterly useless electronics that are built to fail instead of longevity. We are wasting every single resource we have, literally. These problems are all very real, and very realistic. The worst part about this dream, is that it creates people like CommonSense. The American Dream, and success, is very selfish. As you saw. No one thinks about anyone around them, and that effect pours down to the very products they buy, and the earth that they live on. No one cares, and hasn't cared, that they've been buying products of slave labor for centuries. You have pockets now, like yourself, that are trying to right this wrong. Bravo to that! Its just one of the myriad of issues we have right now.
The system is broken. The world we are in, the status quo, values people who make more money. Your mom and pop store will eventually be purchased by another company, with cut throat practices to make the cheapest dollar they can, and that will make them irrelevant. That is if they are making any significant earnings.
Every bit helps, I agree. But to have a serious discussion, we can't mudsling, or assume other members motives. You are separating yourself from me claiming that you're doing your part, and what am I doing. Even if I was literally doing nothing, it still makes no difference about the ship sinking. You are setup to think that changing your spending habits, will do anything. We are locked into the system. And that is the problem. In effect, you're just pouring your money directly back into the problematic system. The location of goods isn't the problem I'm afraid, the taxes still pay for war economies, and bailouts.
And the larger issue is really that we are collectively selfish, as mentioned above. We don't try to cure the worlds hunger issues, which we could easily do. We don't try to help out the record number of homeless teens here in America. There is no money to be made in it.
I think this is such a large issue, and the finance is just really one part of it.