Let’s scrap ‘Small Business Saturday’ and ‘Be Local, Buy Local’ in favor of something simpler

Actualy, we are confronted with two choices (a false dichotomy, but I digress). As productivity increases, the makers (farmers, lumbermen, bakers, miners, welders, etc) have to either (1) give stuff to the takers* (bankers, lawyers, accountants, artists, and formerly employable makers) or (2) figure out ways to let them become virtual-makers(tm), e.g., by paying more for their crafted work than they would have to if buying the cheaper, high-productivity goods. This would mean deliberately reducing productivity, thus lowering total goods available to everyone. As usual, this would hurt the poor more than the rich, since lower productivity means less for everyone (on average) and the poor would immediately find less access to what was produced. Wrestling with this issue leads to nosebleeds and brain attacks, and it is no wonder that no politician or journalist can even pretend to think about this issue except through the lens of “If you don’t go out and shop, the terrorists have won.”

* I use the term takers. not in its pejorative sense but rather as a contrast with makers. Makers are the people who actually convert materials from raw to useable form. Although some takers (e.g., lawyers and bankers) do serve to stabilize the marketplace, their value is on a different metric than someone who actually plants a crop and harvests it, or someone who converts raw steel into a bicycle.