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.
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.