Creating Community Wealth
A community organization has much more influence and power in their local communities, than they do lobbying public officials in Albany, or the District of Columbia. Political power is not a necessary condition for economic advance. Wealth in a community is created more through the recirculation of money within the community than through a large employer employing the residents. Every dollar you spend in a local business establishment, as opposed to a national chain store, keeps that dollar in the community. The more times that dollar recirculates within the community by being exchanged for other locally produced goods and services, the wealthier that community will become. This is how wealth is created. For example, a landlord hires painters, carpenters and other trades, suppliers and services. A community organization can approach local landlords and encourage them to hire local tradespeople (painters, carpenters, etc.). These tradespeople and suppliers can be encouraged and trained from among the community residents and their children as they pursue their education and become adults. A painter needs painting supplies, this creates an opportunity for the development of a paining supply business, which again can be initiated by the residents of the community. The owners of these businesses themselves are encouraged to live in the community, and use their profits to pay residential and business rent and purchase other locally produced goods and services. Similarly, with every other existing business enterprise and economic want and need among the residents, business enterprise can be developed to serve these opportunities from among the community itself. If one surveys the businesses that operate within your neighborhoods, one will find landlords, grocery stores, small manufacturers and suppliers, and other service and dry good businesses opportunities. Each of those businesses purchase supplies and services of different kinds. If energy is invested in finding ways for those businesses to purchase their supplies and services locally, many opportunities will be created for business formations and jobs, the cumulative effect of which will be to generate large amounts of wealth. A community organization can become the nexus through which people communicate with each other, connections and referrals made, opportunities pursued, and community norms and values reinforced. Such community organizations can intercede in resolving conflicts thereby assuring a positive business environment for everyone. For example, such a community organization can assist landlords in assuring that tenants pay their rent on time and ameliorate domestic disputes, as well as monitoring and assuring the quality of the work performed by local trades people and suppliers of goods and services. In return, the landlord agrees to purchase local services and supplies. The more connections among people and businesses that are created, the more businesses formations will develop. The effective education of children becomes more important in order for them to own and competently pursue these businesses opportunities. The educators in the schools could also be encouraged to be residents of the community, thereby expanding the integration among residents, business and service providers. The more a community organization builds connections among its residents and local business and service providers, the greater will be the accumulation of wealth within the community. Each dollar one spends in a national chain store or any business that is not directly connected to the community is a dollar that leaves the community and is lost for the purpose of multiplying the generation of wealth. The primary goal of a community organization is to keep dollars recirculating within the community for as long as possible. A broad based community consciousness can be developed around these basic economic and social values, and to that extent build cooperative social relationships that will contribute to everyone's education and prosperity. The development of economically and socially integrated communities will influence voter participation rates, the ability to build connections with adjacent community based businesses and organizations, and ultimately increase political and economic power and influence.
Re: Creating Community Wealth
So I bought a computer through a local business, (across the street). Paid much more, expecting good service but his service turned out to be more expensive than Gateway or Dell and the computer has defective parts. I leased it (bought it on time) and in four years will have paid more than I used to pay for a Plymouth. The computer store went out of business after fifteen years due to the impossibility of servicing his debts (translate didn't pay the rent). The service contract is moot while the warranty guaranteed by his dealer turned out to be a Chinese firm that conveniently doesn't speak English and refuses to return my calls. Address? P.O Box. So what does all of this mean. Economie of Scale? Well maybe not, I should tell you about my Emerson Air Conditioner sold by a super store. (don't ask) So my point is simply that things are more complicated than the pseudo scientific (translate economic) theoretical structures allow for in their stories. I'm reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonia" which turned out to be a slum while his great cantilevered Masterpiece at "Falling Water" is now falling down because he didn't put enough steel inside the cement. So you can't beat competence and you always pay for it and ideals are just that, ideals and not reality. First, a small town is not a city. My anecdotes happened in a neighborhood in NYCity ten times the size of my hometown in population. Wright was wrong about small towns and wealthy folks in the forest. In my anecdotes the population is largely rental and so is very mobile with little personal capital to make people behave economically as opposed to owning a house in a small town. But "economics" is rarely equipped to take such personal issues as "community size interactions" into account" (of course they always register size differences but their sophistication is put to shame next to the product analysis and consumer targeting of today's businesses). As I think about the last statement I am reminded that business has a conflict of interest in stimulating such sophistication from government and thus claims that academia and the government "can't" do it. "If you want the job done wrong just ask the government" is the operative script, however they are right since neither academia or government is willing to show a sophistication as to the practical basics of the issues. Both government, academia and business simply act like capitalists and communists and argue that the two are so exclusive as to be impossible together. The Chinese will probably make fools of them all. But if we may consider the small community and if I am once more delve into personal anecdote illustrate the points. Communists talk cities while Capitalists talk towns but both are lying through their teeth and both is just rhetoric. So mcgl I should tell you about your ideals which were my Fathers. They are not bad but they demand someone with political power overseeing the workings of the system. My Father did it because he was Superintendent of Schools and considered that what was good for the community was essential to the funding of the schools. Unlike your ideal community we were on an Indian Reserve where there were no local taxes to support the schools. Everything came from the state and national governments. But that contribution from the state was dependent upon population and so his job was dependent upon the health of the community, as for the federal government, you had to know how to "work" them. So he did a lot of volunteer work (translate pro bono) outside of his regular job description. He was active politically & he built the town park from contributions that he solicited from the local "Lion's Club" were he was a member. He taught valuing tradition through such little things as building the park on the sand lot where Yankee star Mickey Mantle had gotten his start. He strengthened the local vocational programs in the schools and gave the students jobs on the custodial staff while having them do community R & D (mapping housing subdivisions for the future) for grades, (they were paid for the custodial work). He developed a sense of community pride and volunteerism in all of the graduates. All of this on a reservation determined by the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection as the number one Super Fund Toxic Waste site in the country (worse even than "Love Canal" which instigated the super fund concept). It was thoroughly undermined by lead and zinc mining. He used a partnership between the government (schools) and the town businessmen within the bounds and balance of good sense.His stress was upon the cooperation between individuals and the belief that everyone gained from meaningful work and that they deserved to do it and be paid for it. But "in kind" services were the oil that greased the community and kept people strong on pride and belief in their ability to succeed. His job, the leadership role, was a 24 hour a d
