Comment on It’s Surprisingly Easy to Live Without an Amazon Prime Subscription

• brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Anybody know more about this?:

  I’ve heard the following sentiment & a similar stat over the years:

  When you spend money locally, those dollars don’t just evaporate to some corporate headquarters across the country or around the world. Instead, they tend to stay in the community, where they’re reinvested between three and six more times. When consumers spend $100 at a chain store, only $13 stays in the local community, on average. At a local business, that number rises to a healthier $48.

  I can imagine a local shop owner sponsoring the local little league team… and I know the average hole-in-the-wall donut or phở restaurant owner won’t have a beach home, and I like they have the potential to make a decent bit of dough without college degrees… but perhaps somebody’s actually analyzed this?

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  • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In summary, I think the statement is untestable because it’s so poorly confined. Basically it’s something that grumpy local business owners with poor value-propositions tend to say. One of those things that sounds like it ought to be true but doesn’t stand analysis.

    For example, there might be a “local” store which doesn’t need many employees but sells products manufatured elsewhere. It’s a local store but most of your money is going elsewhere.

    OTOH there might be a chain store that employs 100s of local people, and buys fresh produce from local farms. Not a local business owner but most of the money is benefiting your local community.

    Additionally, local people own just as many shares in large chains as anyone else.

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    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What an excellent point.

      Have to get to know the business owners in your own community and figure it out yourself perhaps!

      I suppose a study could figure out average impacts though, via random sampling? Not sure how my source had calculated it.

      Additionally, local people own just as many shares in large chains as anyone else.

      You mean our neighbors own stock of Wal-Mart so shopping there is beneficial that way?

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      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah, I think that saying shopping at Wal-Mart is “beneficial” might be a bit of a stretch, I just mean to say that when someone says “shop at a locally owned store so your money stays local” they’re really saying “shop in my store so I get your money”. What most people don’t realise is that their pension plan (called super in Australia, 401k or something in US?) probably owns a bunch of shares in Wal-Mart, so you may as well shop there if you’re a part owner.

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  • PopMyCop@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I didn’t know donut or pho restaurants made their own dough. It probably varies by location, though. I’ve seen some donut places where the boxes of shipped ready to make product were stored where customers could see it. It blew my mind how much they had on hand in order to not run out.

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