Keep it Local FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions About Keep it Local
1) Aren't local goods and services more expensive?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The truth is we actually don’t know. Careful studies of the comparative prices between local and non-local retailers are rare. According to Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, discount prices from chain stores are often temporary. Some dozen or so different Wal-Mart stores around Maine included prices for the list of drugs surveyed varied by 15 percent from the lowest-priced Wal-Mart pharmacy to the highest priced Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart's prices are lowest in areas where it is fairly new on the scene, and highest in towns where it has largely eliminated the competition. There's plenty of documentation that Wal-Mart routinely sells entire lines of goods below cost in order to squeeze the competition and gain market share. Then prices go up. It has done this in pharmacy goods, toys, gasoline and now groceries.
A critical mission of Keep it Local is to make sure consumers, businesses and government purchasing agents ask the right question before spending dollars in a way that will hurt the economy: Is there a reasonably priced local alternative available?
2) Is Keep it Local protectionist?
Not at all. Keep it Local is entirely about the free choices of consumers, businesses and government purchasing agents. No one is being forced to buy local, and no tariffs or other burdens are being placed on non-local goods. Keep it Local campaigns aim to give consumers better information about the availability of attractive local goods & services and the significant benefits of buying local.
Paradoxically, Keep it Local turns out to be the best way to develop prosperous links to the global economy. Export-led development usually means supporting a small number of globally competitive niches within a global economy. The work of Jane Jacobs has shown that import-replacing development, which underlies buy-local initiatives, tends to nurture hundreds of existing locally owned businesses, some of which will then become strong exporters. Development led by import replacement rather than export promotion diversifies, stabilizes & strengthens the local economy.
3) Does Keep it Local seek to subsidize inefficient local business?
No. The United States is a crazy quilt of thousands of market imperfections - subsidies, regulations, insurance liability limits, tax wrinkles - nearly all of which favor non-local business. Buy local campaigns are very modest efforts to adjust this tilt in the playing field. The tilt is so extreme - probably 99 percent of subsidies go to non-local firms - that we would have a very long way to go before it was undone.
4) How sound is the methodology for the studies that show a better local multiplier for locally owned businesses?
The methodology of these studies could always be improved, but the results are driven by a simple fact: local businesses spend more locally - on local management, on local advertising, and on local goods and services. Because most economic multipliers are in the range of two to four times the initial expenditure, these differences in local business spending will always result in substantially greater benefits to the local economy.
5) Aren't local businesses less regulated and therefore worse for the environment?
There are four reasons to believe that local businesses are generally better for the environment. First, many local businesses are service related, and these usually are labor intensive with few ecological impacts. Second, a community can more readily work with a local polluter spoiling the local quality of life than a polluter located 10,000 miles away. Third, local business owners have a higher commitment to clean water since their own children must drink it. Fourth, a community with primarily locally-owned businesses can raise ecological standards with greater confidence that these firms will adapt, which tips the political balance in favor of greater ecological responsibility.
6) Don't local businesses pay worse wages?
Businesses with more than 500 employees pay about a third more on average than businesses with fewer than 500 employees. But these wage differences have been shrinking in recent years, as many high-paying larger firms move factories overseas and as low-wage retailers like Wal-Mart displace existing small businesses. Moreover, studies suggest that over time, as smaller businesses naturally mature and grow, these wage differentials largely disappear.
7) Shouldn't we leave the market alone?
A healthy market requires that consumers fully gather information about available local alternatives before making purchasing decisions, in full awareness that every dollar spent locally will have two to four times more benefit than a dollar spent non-locally.
8) Are Keep it Local campaigns legal?
Unquestionably. In a free-market economy, consumers and businesses may make any purchasing decisions they wish. And in a free-speech society, citizens may persuade one another why local purchases are advantageous. The only real legal questions concern government procurement policies giving local preference.
9) Won't Keep it Local hurt the poor in the Third World from whom we import?
If a large number of U.S. communities successfully move toward self-reliance, then yes, many imports from the global South would be reduced, to the detriment of the exporting poor countries. But a growing number of development economists are recognizing that the key to improving the plight of these countries is to end their export platform status and to help them become more self-reliant. Communities committed to helping the South might form sister cities that facilitate the transfer of state-of-the-art technology and policy.
10) Is Keep it Local a front for a radical agenda?
The vision of a world of sustainable communities does differ dramatically from a vision of globalization that tolerates enrichment of a few at the expense of hundreds of millions of workers and families and the destruction of the communities and ecosystems in which they live. But it's hard to imagine more traditional values than those underlying Local First - namely free markets, small business, fair play and self-sufficiency.
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*(Most of this content has been repurposed from the BALLE website).