Christmas Excess Will Only Make It Worse
But How Can We Make A Difference?
This Christmas, a little over a month away as I write this, will be markedly different for many people. For others, very little will change. But a change is overdue. Christmas has become less a season of celebration and more of a contest to see who can buy the biggest, best gift. At least for the majority.
Every year, local television stations (which are becoming a thing of the past) gleefully run a segment wherein a local reporter goes down to the mall and stop shoppers to ask how much they think they’ve spent on Christmas shopping. The number of folks who admit to (or lie about) spending hundreds of dollars always astounds me. My first thought comes from a place of envy, I’ll admit. I’ve never been able to spend hundreds of dollars on Christmas shopping. But beyond that, I always ask, why?
It’s Not A Contest
Why is it necessary to buy the people we care about a gift that is grossly overpriced?
Simply put — guilt and peer pressure. Now I could rant about how this isn’t fair, but you know that already. For me though, there’s a difference between buying someone a gift they really want and will value as opposed to buying them something better than they’ll get from someone else. The holidays aren’t supposed to be a contest. All that being said though, the supply that enables that contest is compromised this year.
COVID hit the world pretty hard. Not just this continent either. Wander around your house and take stock of where your favorite items have been made. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Now consider this, in those countries there were fewer people to gather or produce the basic materials to make computer chips, fewer people to produce appliances, car parts and tools. From a culinary perspective, there were fewer migrant workers to gather the fruit and vegetables from the fields, fewer slaughterhouse employees to fill orders for chicken, ground beef and lamb chops. Fewer people to wrap the meat, label it and send it off to the grocery stores. Fewer loggers to get out in the woods to cut down the trees that make everything from toilet paper, to school books to hospital-grade masks. Fewer people to pack those shipping containers and load them on the ships that had fewer people to navigate and sail safely across the world.
Just Accelerate Automation…
I’ve seen one suggestion that we should make way for automation to do those things. But I disagree. Every continent and country is struggling with unemployment. Why make things worse by handing those jobs over to machines? Not only are we giving away jobs that people need and would welcome, but how does that help our economy? No, the answer is not to “accelerate automation”.
If John Q. is a butcher and spends part of his paycheck at the bakery, then the baker can take some of that money and buy flour for his next bread order. The flour mill can then afford to buy more wheat kernels from the farmer…and the chain goes on. If we roll over and let machines take over, there is no benefit to the people looking for work nor to the economy that depends on the circulation of money.
There is an opinion circulating that says North American workers are looking down their noses at working in the ports, at scoffing at working in the fields to harvest oranges, tomatoes and the like. I disagree. There are a high number of people that literally go from farm to farm, harvest the crop and then move on. Usually, these are migrant workers just trying to make better lives for their families, but in many cases, it is young people simply filling a need.
The supply chain issue is a huge problem, made up of layers upon layers of outdated thinking, greed and short-sightedness. But there are things we can do. Maybe none of them will help alleviate the backlog of ships waiting to dock and unload. Perhaps it won’t make enough of a difference to fill the shelves at Walmart, but we owe it to ourselves to try.
- Start paying people what they are worth. It’s time to start paying people a living wage. That includes servers at restaurants, instead of assuming tips will make up the difference. That also includes store chains that keep prices low by paying their employees crap wages that never let them get ahead.
- Let’s take a realistic look at Christmas. Is it a celebration with family (natural or chosen) and friends or a contest where we try and prove how much we care with price tags? Trying to order online is only going to exacerbate the problem. Handmade holidays aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, granted, but can’t we reach for a happy medium?
- While we’re talking about demand and how it affects supply, the closer to home we shop, the less demand there is to ship goods across oceans. Not long ago there was a 100 miles or less movement — a challenge to inspire people to shop for their food grown or raised within a 100-mile radius from their house. It’s time to tweak that a bit for the holidays. Shop for items at least made on your own continent, if not in your own country. Although, the more local, the better.
There are more approaches worthy of a closer look, but those few I’ve listed above give us somewhere to start. No, they won’t solve all the issues caused by the supply chain breakdown, but they certainly won’t contribute to them either. And what’s that saying about being part of the problem? Oh yes, “Be part of the solution, not part of the problem”. Solid advice.
