How do we create jobs in our own community?

[jacquelope]

Many people without work now will never work again, especially those over 50.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/unemployment-after-50-long-term_n_835955.html

How do we stop being dependent upon these businesses and start creating jobs in the community? We need to take action locally and do something. American workers are being left behind by the world. We have to find a way to take care of ourselves.

Any ideas?

[readmoreoften]

1. General strike. Kick out the corporations. Take over the means of production.

[jacquelope]

2. I'd sure as heck like to see that happen.

Not to mention a boycott of a large number of corporations. Kill their profits and drive them out of America. Replace them with companies that respect the social contract.

Hey... wtf happened to the concept of the social contract anyways?

[ecstatic]

10. Can you be more specific?

Do you mean kick out the major supermarkets, drug stores and chain restaurants in neighborhoods? And would small business owners have the means to employ just as many people while providing them with benefits and decent wages?

[jacquelope]

12. Not sure, but given the rise in oil prices and decline of the dollar

the major supermarkets may be forced out anyway.

It'll start costing big money to haul in goods from outside the community; eventually more than it'll cost to make it locally.

[Yupster]

3. Start a small business?

If it's successful, hire two more people, and then two more.

[midnight]

4. How do we get funding when the banks are sitting on the money?

[jacquelope]

6. Employee owned companies?

Peer lending?

Granted these are shot-in-the-dark ideas. And they're only part of the solution... the other is to make buying local more economical.

[Yupster]

8. Start small

Start as a part time idea. If it works, you can expand later.

Think of what you like to do and how you can make money from it.

[humus]

5. your walking on it.

What we have before us, if we want our communities to survive, is the
building of an adversary economy, a system of local or community
economies within, and to protect against, the would-be global economy.
Wendell Berry

Nothing is more pleasing or heartening than a plate of nourishing,
tasty, beautiful food artfully and lovingly prepared. Anything less
is unhealthy, as well as a desecration.
Wendell Berry

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that
governs least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best
citizen is the one who least needs governing. The answer to big
government is not private freedom, but private responsibility.
-Wendell Berry, "The Loss of the Future" in The Long-Legged House
(1969),

To put the bounty and the health of our land,
our only commonwealth, into the hands of people
who do not live on it and share its fate
will always be an error.
For whatever determines the fortune of the land
determines also the fortune of the people.
If history teaches anything, it teaches that.
--Wendell Berry

[eilen]

7. Worker coops, cottage businesses

getting people to shop at local flea markets, farmers markets for daily necessities instead of the Big Box. Some communities have created their own currency-- Berkshares for instance.

People have to stat working together and organizing.

Understand it would have to be at the direct economy level as industry was packed up and shipped out. We don't have the equipment, the knowledge base on maintaining it anymore. There are some things we can make but many other endeavors-- require venture capital that ordinary people are locked out of. But still, there are home businesses that have expanded. For example there is a factory that makes portable gun cleaning kits locally that is a family business. http://www.nywbc.org/pages/newsletter/5_03.pdf (Otis Products Inc.)

small is beautiful.

http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/

[jacquelope]

11. Another idea that got thrown at me was reinvogorating community organizing

Good ideas you have there, good reading too. But do we really lack the knowledge base to start up industries in America anymore?

[Motown_Johnny]

9. legalize something that is illegal almost everywhere else

casino gambling, marijuana consumption, extended drinking hours(prostitution). Yep, It Sucks!! But it will create jobs.


I am not advocating any of these things, but you asked

[fasttense]

13. When my spouse got fired and told he was overqualified for every job he applied to.

We started farming. We have a small plot of land but we specialized in high end items like artichokes and mushrooms. We got a Naturally grown certification and built a greenhouse. We sell at a Farmer's Market in the big city. They even have their own tokens they use at the market for money.

It's the only way we knew of to fight back.

It's fun but very hard work.