A Good American?

So it’s not news that the current economic situation in the U.S. and the world is bad.  People are losing their jobs, houses are losing their value and everyone is nervous at best and scared stiff at worst.  I have been thinking a lot about what it is that we are supposed to do now as Americans to do our part in a recovery and it bothers me that the media and the experts keep telling us that we need to spend more money.  The dissonance comes because that’s the same thing that they are telling us got us in this situation in the first place.  I do get the argument that we can’t all hoard our money, and frankly, very few of us are set up enough to provide everything we need without buying anything, but I have decided that it is now even more important to spend my money in the places I care about, buying things that I actually value.  If everyone goes out and keeps buying cheap, plastic trinkets made in China and sold in big box stores that we then treat as disposable, we won’t get anywhere except right back here.  Anyway, my family is not spending as much as we did, but we are spending our money in the places we care about supporting – farmers’ markets, Etsy, local shops, and even big corporations that are trying to do the right thing (mostly).  I’ve been saving up my knitting money for the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival (Howard County fairgrounds, first weekend of May) – amazing yarn, local, crafty, and full of people I want to support.