Wow it’s Christmas in August for me. Yesterday my husband and I were driving down Notre Dame Blvd and he spotted a discarded push mower leaned up against a dumpster at an apartment house. I have been wanting one for my tenants’ yards, just for those little patches of crab grass that spring up around shady trees. I found two on Craigslist – one in Napa for $35, the other in Redwood City for about same. Too far. Home Depot has one for $89 – too expensive for my budget. But I knew I’d find one if I just kept looking. Then BAM! We’re driving down the street one day, and there’s one just leaned up against a dumpster next to a very shabby mattress and box spring. Hello Dolly!
And it’s dandy – in good shape, working order. Fresh cut grass stuck to the blades. And oh gee – Made in the USA! Looks like they only discarded it because they had moved into an apartment building. Boy howdy I jumped out of the truck and loaded that fellow right in the back, waved Thank You! at the windows of the building, and drove away feeling like a lady who saved eighty-nine bucks. Always good to keep something out of the landfill too.
My husband and I are practicing attrition, a $64 word for cutting our spending. Partly because we’re tight right now, having spent a bunch of money doing repairs and replacing old fixtures at the rentals, and partly because, we want to support American manufacturing and the new trade deals the president is seeking. Unless it’s a necessity – like a new toilet seat – if we can’t find American-made, we don’t buy it.
Yeah, we had to buy a China-made toilet seat for the new American-made toilet we bought for the rental, which I find ironic, but here’s the reality – we didn’t find any seats that were made in the USA in the price range we are in. Life is full of compromise.
But compromise is a two-way street – when we went to buy the toilet seat we found the mower. Get out!
I love that about our town – when somebody has something they don’t need that’s still perfectly good, they put it at the end of their driveway with a ‘FREE’ sign. Just the day before we found the mower, we were driving along Vallombrosa and there it was – the wheelbarrow I’ve been wanting. A nice old metal barrow with good wooden handles. Obviously used, but here’s the thing – the tire was still good, newish even. We use our wheelbarrows for various chores until the arms or the tire rot off, and then they are used for flower beds. They’re so expensive, we haven’t replaced the last one. Until the other day, when, there it was, alongside the road, with a carboard box saying ‘FREE’. Inside the box there was the perfectly good tire and all the parts to put it back on.
Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, you just have to believe.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
this is cracking me up “we try and buy everything American-made, unless it’s out of our price range, then we gotta get the cheap China stuff”
Yeah, that’s what everybody does lol
Yeah, sure “Jake” – just another fake name interloper with nothing to add to the conversation. Enjoy your China-made shit “Jake”!
A little bit off topic: but something that is definitely not reported.
There is a huge black market in California. It’s the black market for labor and services not necessarily a black market for products.
Businesses in California are being regulated and taxed to death. Minimum wage laws, work rules, Social Security, employer insurance, unemployment benefits, permit fees, inspection fees, inventory tax, business licensing, energy costs, and a 10% sales tax on top of everything else. Try going on Amazon and select what you want, and finding out that your faucet or light fixture can’t be shipped to California because of some weird restrictions.
Undocumented folks ( almost all Spanish speakers) will work for cash. And they have skills! Construction, landscaping, labor. The job gets done for less than half the cost. But here in the surprising part. Business owners will tell you: if I run it through the store during business hours it costs this, but if I do it for you after hours and on the weekend for cash, it’s half price.
There are well documented studies that demonstrate that when you raise the tax rate too high the overall tax revenue actually goes down. As an example: people might be willing to pay 25% of their income in taxes, but when it gets to 50% people actually find a way to avoid taxes. California is always singing the blues about not having enough money. California has both a spending problem and a revenue problem. The spending problem is well documented with Union pensions and the cost of government. But the revenue problem is that there’s a giant labor black market and a lot of people are simply not participating in the economy. Or rather they are participating, just not paying any taxes.
But of course this is more complicated. The undocumented folks are the biggest user of the social service safety net. Medical benefits, food benefits, educational assistance, and use of the infrastructure without paying any taxes is a recipe for overspending.
so it’s complicated.
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Wow, this is a post. I will repost this so we can have a conversation – thanks!