community

A story in USA Today titled Oregon, N.D. able to spread their wealth across USA presents the paradox that while Oregon is an economic powerhouse producing with wealth-producing high tech industry, the billions of dollars they produce are going largely to investors around the world and retirees in places like Arizona while Oregon has an unemployment rate above the national average.

While communities welcome national and multi-national corporations that provide jobs, communities must have locally owned businesses. The numbers demonstrate why: If you spend a dollar at a locally-owned business – 67 cents stays in the community. If you spend a dollar at a non-locally owned business, this ratio is reversed –57 cents leaves the community.

This dynamic is explained by David Morris, Vice President of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit economic research and development organization based in Minneapolis and Washington, D C. “If you’re buying local and not at a chain or branch store, chances are that store is not making a huge profit.” “That means more goes into input costs—supplies and upkeep, printing, advertising, paying employees—which puts that money right back in the community.”

David Boyle of the New Economic Foundation puts it more colorfully, “Money is like blood. It needs to keep moving around to keep the economy going,” he says, noting that when money is spent elsewhere—at big supermarkets, non-locally owned utilities and other services such as on-line retailers—”it flows out, like a wound.”

Even big businesses think well of localization. 65% of multinational enterprises believe localization is either important or very important for achieving higher company revenues, according to a 2007 study by California State University at Chico, 2007.

An additional factor is the velocity of money – the speed and number of times money passes from one person or business to another, each benefiting. Starting in the 1980’s velocity has decreased as more money has been diverted to the financial sector and it’s worsened in recent years. More money is being printed, but it’s not going into circulation.” Why? Wall Street found more profit in leveraging money than doing the business than in making and producing. The problem is moving money creates nothing.

To start and operate a locally-owned business not only can provide a sustainable livelihood for you, but it also benefits the community by generating money that helps nurture other locally-owned businesses, each providing one or more sustainable livelihoods. People like locally owned businesses – the popularity of locally grown food, local restaurants, your handyman and on and on.

If you think we can help, we offer consulting and counseling. [maxbutton id=”1″]

Comments and questions on the substance of this blogs are welcome. If you have other questions about this website, please contact me directly for a consulting appointment.

Over 1350 people have responded to the Elm Street Economy Sustainable Livelihoods survey since we put it up in 2009. The survey seeks to find out how secure people feel about the future of their current career path.

To determine this we asked a series of questions about how well respondents thought their career would hold up to the eight criteria we believe predict how enduring a particular career will be as our country shifts to an increasingly localized economy.

Here are findings to date to date:

First survey results to date show people are optimistic about their own careers. 80% believe what they do will still be in demand in five years.

Contributing to this belief is more than half (53%) say their job or work serves a non-discretionary basic need in their own or a nearby community. About the same number (54%) believe their skills are readily barterable.
Better than half (55%) believe they can do their work virtually, that is serve an employer or clients and customers located anywhere.
Three out of four respondents state their work can be done independently from home.
Only out of four people are concerned their work might be subject to being replaced by technology or being off-shored, but four out of think their work is not vulnerable to these forces.
Two out of three respondents say that the supplies and materials they need to their work are available locally and affordably.
Fewer than half (47%) identify with the term “Main Street Economy” and 58% think an “Elm Street Economy” is different than a Main Street Economy.

But most interesting is that after taking the survey, three out of ten people said their assessment of the future of their job or training had changed.

So what does this mean? If management guru Tom Peters is correct in his prediction that most of the white and pink collar jobs we now hold will no longer exist within the near feature, then our respondents either:

do not reflect the majority of American workers – most of whom who work in some form for management, technology, service, entertainment and retail or
Our survey is reaching a very narrow segment of the US population who have already positioned themselves for the dramatic changes that are underway in response to a weakening national and global economy, rising shortages and higher costs of natural resources and significant climate change.
A third of those responding “woke up” to the new reality for the future of their careers by taking the survey.

The changes taking place in our world today are leading to as profound a shift in regard to work as when human kind stopped hunting and gathering and began farming or when we left the farmlands to work in factories and high rises.

To secure our future well-being we all need to think honestly about if the current jobs we have been trained for and hold actually involve meeting basic needs, could be carried out at home independently without an employer, serves their own or a close existing neighborhood, has all the materials they produced nearby and can be easily bartered.

To discover the type of livelihoods we believe will make us secure for the future we offer courses Finding a Sustainable Livelihood obtainable from PostPeakLiving.com and soon by the Learning Annex that feature 200+ Sustainable Livelihoods for a secure tomorrow. An additional resource will be our soon to be released Working From Home Encyclopedia as an interactive eBook.

Comments on the substance of the blogs are welcome. If you have other questions, please contact me directly for a consulting appointment.

Locally-Owned Businesses a Key to a Community’s Sustainability

Survey Finds Over 1300 Optimistic About the Future of Their Careers … or Are They?