I can work for local customers, but I am not currently. They have been outbid by non-locals. If you are hired by local business, then by all means, patronize

I can work for local customers, but I am not currently. They have been outbid by non-locals. If you are hired by local business, then by all means, patronize those businesses in return. But as long as I am not hired by them, don't tell me I should, just because it is in your economic self-interest for me to do so. You are very astute. I haven't had any stake in any real estate market anywhere since I lost the majority of my positive net worth to the real estate market in 2007. (Thanks very much for reminding me of that.) So whatever real estate market I happen to be in can go copulate with itself. I'm not buying anything I can't really own ever again. Anecdotally, the property taxes I pay (that are included in my rent) go to the county--as do the business taxes paid by businesses on my side of the county line--and that county has refused to remit any portion of those funds to my city, which spans two counties, for the provision of services to city residents. As a result, the schools are overcrowded and other city services have been cut. So they can go copulate with themselves, too. In contrast, McDonald's has never failed to give me the same consistent experience whenever I pay them their menu price from my own pocket. "My community" can't ever seem to uphold its end of any implied social contracts, but at least McDonald's can always sell me a Big Mac when I can afford one. Having been repeatedly shown that loyalty no longer exists, if it ever did, I am now a strictly transactional mercenary, following tit-for-tat cooperation strategy, because that is what is in my economic self-interest. I am not going to "buy local" because it has feel-good marketing around it. I will buy local only if I see a specific benefit from it, and I have never actually seen one. "Buy local" is marketing bullshit from people who don't admit that they would benefit from it far more than you ever will, and from people who hypocritically do their own buying non-locally. Money doesn't get tired climbing hills or crossing rivers. Geography is continually becoming less important to economics. Buy closer to you as measured by your social network graph, not as measured by physical distance.