They keep raising prices, stating that it’s due to inflation, but then they keep having record profits.
Meanwhile, the average American can barely afford rent or food nowadays.
What are we to do? Vote? I have been but that doesn’t seem to do much since I’m just voting for a representative that makes the actual decisions.
I do want to just take a second to highlight this. The idea of buying local and buying from people who make things instead of corporations can be hard. It’s expensive. And obviously the point is that we are all struggling. So looking at all the stuff I buy I thinking I need to spend so much more on all of that is daunting.
We all live under the same shitty capitalistic hellscape. We can’t get out of it. We can only do what we can. Need a new dresser? A locally made one will cost you a lot. Don’t stress about not being able to afford it. If you need to, get a cheaper one.
But for a lot of things, you can get it for just as cheap looking around on Etsy. If they have their own website where you can order it so they don’t have to pay Etsy money, even better. My boyfriend is in his last semester of nursing school, so I’m getting him a gift, and it’s custom made. It’s expensive, but most things I would get him are probably made with cheap labor in another country, and would just help prop up a large corporation.
Does this mean everything I buy is custome made? That it’s made locally? No. I can’t afford that. But I stopped using Amazon for just about everything, have started buying from people when I can, and it’s honestly kind of nice. I got to help someone make a living doing what they want to do, instead of just working a job. So even though we can’t afford it all the time, it’s great to do it when you can, and not let the idea of it needing to be everything make us feel defeated and then never doing it.
When I said buy local I was specifically talking about food and similar. Depending on few factors such as: climate, availability of land, other people with similar goals, food can be easy to produce either as a group or individual basis and there are systems looking at an aquaponics cycle for example tilapia -> leafy greens -> BSF maggots -> you can either split this into chickens and tilapia or just back into tilapia (we’ve done this it really requires a group effort and land availability).
Other things as you’ve mentioned like furniture can be a little more challenging due to economies of scale (also child labour, corruption, and general shittery) that major corporations are able to exploit that a local tradesperson can’t.
For this sort of stuff I just try to budget, I never buy it immediately.
I guess it’s about compromises, and unfortunately for certain things we have to do so.
To reiterate the importance of a group, it’s really made it a lot easier to cut costs by having a group with various expertise.
Oh yeah, food is definitely a great one. I’m lucky in that towards the end of summer, our local vegetable garden will sell a lot of their stuff in front of the local church. It’s right next to my apartment complex. I love baking, especially muffins, so I’ll go right over there and grab some blue berries and raspberries. Get a pumpkin for Halloween. Maybe some watermelon. And all of that money goes back into things for the garden for the next year. I think it’s great.