BRATTLEBORO — I'm no economist, but when I hear about downtown businesses blaming their financial woes on the presence of people on the sidewalk asking for spare change, I'm left scratching my head.
It seems like if you're going to run a business, you'd want to know the basics of supply and demand. Like if you want to make money, you need to offer goods and services that people want at a price they can pay.
So, if you want people to buy stuff from you, they need money.
That's what they're trying to do on the sidewalks downtown: get money for the things they need. Because in our society, no one gets their basic needs met without it. Minimum wage isn't enough to pay rent in this town. Social Security disability income isn't enough, either.
Seems to me, “panhandling” is stimulating the economy rather than hurting it. More money in people's hands means more transactions means more revenue, right?
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“But what if they spend it on drugs?” This is such a derailing question, but I'll address it because it is so incessant.
For one thing, drugs help people cope with desperate conditions. Humans have always altered their consciousness and relieved pain with substances and will continue to do so. Sure, some drugs are riskier than others, mostly due to being criminalized.
An analogy: During Prohibition, alcohol consumption was far more dangerous and lethal, and violent crimes associated with an underground alcohol economy were rampant.
The U.S. government went as far as to add poison to commercial-use alcohol and then took no responsibility for the deaths that resulted from people re-distilling and drinking it. As far as officials were concerned, they deserved it for breaking the law. Good riddance. Imagine being sentenced to death for having a cocktail with your dinner last night.
If you're worried about the risks associated with illicit drug use, as am I, consider that harm reduction has been shown to save lives.
Needle exchanges prevent disease, Narcan reverses overdoses, and supervised consumption sites prevent them, as does decriminalization. The only reason not to support harm reduction is an indifference to drug-related deaths.
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Don't let me tell you how to run your business, because I'm certainly no expert. I don't even like capitalism.
But if you're concerned about our economy and specifically how it affects your bottom line, I can think of some concrete actions that would benefit all of us a lot more than public hand-wringing about people who dare to be visibly poor downtown.
• Sell things people need and can afford. Three-thousand-dollar rugs not flying off the shelves? Rethink your business strategy. I can buy an $80 bouquet of flowers downtown, but I have to drive somewhere else to buy a pair of underwear.
• Stop prioritizing tourists over our community members. An economy that relies on tourism is not stable, sustainable, or fair to those of us building our lives here. We need a local economy that provides the kind of jobs that will keep people living and working here, not more low-wage service and retail jobs.
• Consider that calling the police on your customers and banning them forever from your store might be cutting into your sales.
• Push for increased wages, universal health care, and affordable housing. These things would make the difference for many of our neighbors between financial stability and the poverty you find so unsightly. And residents' financial stability contributes to the overall financial stability of the community.
• Support harm-reduction efforts in our town. It's a lot more humane and effective than putting codes on the bathroom locks.
One thing that's not leading to positive change is claiming victimhood and throwing people under the bus who are already well-acquainted with the underside of its wheels.