Okay, so I'm asking you to buy American? What kind of lousy Christmas are your kids going to have if you don't buy them the latest electro-gizmo from China? Will they be labeled "dork" if they don't get the newest addition to Wii this year?
Maybe, but they'll be dorks with a conscience, and with employed parents. Try these options for gifts:
A quart of maple syrup.
A gift basket of "Pain is Good" salsa.
Loggerhead (tm) wrenches
Burt's Bees skin and beauty products
Texas blue jeans
Any number of local artisan specialty items such as salad bowls, bracelets and other jewelry, throw rugs, blankets, etc.
Tickets to the Nutcracker, the Rockettes, a local museum, a night at the theater, or the Sing-along Messiah.
A CD of local music. The CD (and the CD player) may be made in China, but you're supporting your local community with the purchase.
What else can you think of?
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2 comments:
I like the "buy local" concept a lot; I also like the "simplify" concept ... writing a story and putting it in a binder; taking a picture and framing it; gift cards to local restaurants; etc.
One thing my kids like to do (and I love to receive) are hand-made coupons, things like "Good for one afternoon of fishing with you" or "Good for a game of ping pong" and things of that nature.
On the other side of the argument, though, I went through a bit of a mind shift last summer when I was working on ASP (Appalachian Service Project) in eastern Tennessee. We were in a very small town whose two biggest employers were probably
"StuffMart" and that big burger chain.
I mentioned to one of the staffers that I needed to buy some supplies but I regretted that I was probably going to go to StuffMart. She pointed out that if it weren't for StuffMart and the burger chain, unemployment in that town would be a lot higher than it was.
Apparently the people there were grateful for those chains coming in and providing jobs where there weren't any jobs before.
It's a complex web.
The other thing that would be interesting to know ... I've heard that some huge amount of raw materials is shipped over to Asia so that products can be manufactured and then sold back to the U.S. The thing is that we can't manufacture a lot of those products as cheaply as they can be produced overseas ... Right now, if everything that StuffMart sold was actually produced here, the prices would (possibly) be significantly higher than they already are.
Just food for thought. It'd be interesting to see some numbers on how all of this plays together.
Thanks for setting up this blog. I think it'll be informative to all!
Cheers,
Joel
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