How Will We Live?

Will our pursuit of “more for less” instead create less more often? “How Will We Live?” is an original documentary from WKTV that explores the impact locally owned businesses have on our local economies.

With interviews from business experts across divergent fields, “How Will We Live?” ask just that, how will we? What economic decisions are being made in every community that are affecting the quality of life in every town. As manufacturing jobs in the US continue to dwindle, the US and every community in it is experiencing a radical alteration of how they will live.

Many believe the key to economic well being for any given area is building up locally owned businesses. Packed with important information for business and civic leaders, “How Will We Live?” is a must see documentary for anyone involved at any level of our local economy.

Can the constant search to “get more for less” create “less, more often.” This can be true in retail, can it also apply to any business? Even society?

Small business makes up nearly 60% of the American economy and in nearly every community across America, small business feels itself in a squeeze. From the loss of manufacturing jobs to the influx of national chain retailers and restaurants, communities are changing. There is more spending, but fewer dollars are staying in the local community. Now a move is afoot to promote consumer spending via locally owned business as a first recourse. Big box retailers and distant corporations are not intrinsically evil, but their actions prove they’re bottom line is usually not the same as the community they’re in.

In the end perhaps, like always, a community’s prosperity depends on itself. From 1983 to 1999, the 200 largest corporations in the world only experienced a 14 percent growth in their labor force while their profits grew 360 percent.* Most job growth comes from local, independent businesses. With the global economy touching every corner of America, the slow marginalization of the traditional American worker will force new ways of thinking on us all. Thinking that will have to affect our lifestyles and habits.

One of the driving forces in small, locally owned business is education. Other countries, like Japan, have a much higher percentage. Now, for the first time in 100 years the number of European and Asian applicants for US patents has exceeded American applicants. If entrepreneurship is necessary to maintain America’s economy as the largest, most vibrant in the world what must America’s response be to a higher education level for it’s citizens?

What is the response from all the parties so far? Is anyone or anything making a difference? The case that local business is economically better for a community exists, but does the general population know and can local business respond with a savvy creating an environment where they not only survive, but thrive?

"How Will We Live?" asks just that. How will we live in 20 or 30 years if our present trends and behaviors continue?

*source: Yes! Journal of Positive Futures. Fall, 2002

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