International conflicts might occur far away, but they hit close to home for some Durango residents who are mindful of their expenses.
The cost of living, including housing, food, gas, health care and consumer goods have increased over the past several years, often causing residents to worry about how to make ends meet.
The reason prices have continually gone up in the past several years is because of international conflicts and global economic disruptions, said Daniel Clayton, lecturer of economics at Fort Lewis College. The most recent price increases, he said, are a result from the war in Iran and the Trump administration’s blanket tariffs on imported goods.
But still, some residents – like Durango Tool Library’s librarian Tenny Webster or Durango Outdoor Gear Exchange owner Jen LaCroix – are thinking of creative ways to ease those financial woes.
Call it a shift in attitude, a new mindset or a change in perspective, but in the face of economic challenges, some Durangoans are focused on helping residents save money and build community.
There are several reasons causing this era of economic uncertainty.
Clayton said lingering or “sticky” price increases from major economic disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have continued to impact consumer prices.
Rent prices, for example, rose during the COVID-19 pandemic as remote workers moved in, but prices did not fall even as many workers returned to offices – a trend known as inelastic demand. That applies to most essential goods and services people buy on a day-to-day basis.
“Goods and services with inelastic demand are those that people can’t afford to stop consuming, for example, housing, health care, gas, groceries and so on,” he said. “If demand for a product or service is inelastic, business can get away with not lowering prices because regardless of the price, people still need to buy.”
Prices going up would not necessarily be problematic if wages went up at the same rate, Clayton said. But, wages have not gone up as fast as prices, which is why it’s hard to afford as much as before.
He said peoples’ inability to afford as much as they once could is because of the free market’s inability to allocate resources efficiently to each member of society – which he called a “market failure.”
“We are (a) highly individualist society with a strong tradition of consumerism, which works great if everything goes well, but does not help us much in difficult times,” he said.
At the same time, he said, the inequality caused by those market failures largely stems from U.S. policy decisions since the 1980s – including deregulation and tax laws that favor big businesses and the ultra-wealthy over the majority of Americans.
Webster, the librarian at the Durango Tool Library, was inspired to start his business after seeing how the traditional consumer economy created heaps of trash and reduced peoples’ economic mobility.
For him, it all started with dumpster diving with his college roommates.
“We were interested in alleviating the amount of waste that we produce,” he said.
The reason, he said, was to find free items that people threw away and to cut back on the amount of stuff that would otherwise go into a landfill. But that consciousness of how common it is for someone to buy something and throw it out led Webster to start thinking about the broader economic model.
Webster said part of the issue is in the supply chain. Traditionally, that functions by extracting raw materials from the environment, making them into a product and selling it to someone who eventually throws it away – a process known as the linear economy.
In contrast, the circular economy emphasizes reducing waste by taking items that can be used again and recycling them back into the supply chain. That spreads out resources and can even lead to new economic growth.
That idea led him and his wife, Kathleen Gollner, to found the library in 2021.
“A little over half the tools in this library were donated, while the other half were bought new,” Webster said. “We’re pretty far down this traditional economic model before we kind of loop out in order to kind of alleviate more of the waste.”
The library lends members tools so they don’t have to buy their own, but can still benefit from repairing things. That reduces waste, builds community and saves people money, Webster said.
“We’ve got this triple bottom line as a public benefit corporation, where we have to think about the people, the planet and profit equally,” he said.
In a similar vain. Lacroix founded the Durango Outdoor Gear Exchange with her husband, Chase Lacroix, in 2014.
The goal was to help lower the financial barrier to outdoor recreation while cutting waste. Most of the consignment items are a third of their retail price, she said, and 60% to 70% of the store’s inventory is used.
“We wanted to build upon this access to adventure,” she said. “There is such a barrier to having the right gear to get outside safely and have the most fun.”
Outdoor gear and clothing are expensive and even harder to afford for consumers already strained by high costs like gas, rent, food and health care. Recycling functional used items back into the community can improve access to quality gear while also paying residents who sell it.
“We have almost 11,000 consignors, and in our existence, $1.5 million have been spent back in the store over 12 years from people using their store credit,” Lacroix said.
That money largely stays in the community, she said, which she hopes residents can then put toward gas, food and rent.
Amoneeta Beckstein, a psychology professor at FLC, said the reason people buy as much as they do comes down to a matter of psychology.
“How can we change people’s values and mindset and behaviors and attitudes so that we can distribute the abundance?” he said.
What LaCroix and Webster are doing are examples of that shift in mindset. But, Beckstein said, it also comes down to the consumer.
“The idea of having the shift to where we say, ‘It’s OK if I have a used couch that somebody doesn’t want, as long as it’s functional and doesn’t smell like cat piss,’” he said.
Clayton agreed. He said turbulent economic times can make communities come together and think more creatively.
“One positive side effect of having people struggle to make ends meet and having a failing political system is that it forces us to look to each other for a solution,” he said.
Clayton said he is not convinced enough people see the benefits of moving away from the traditional economic system without political reform aimed at addressing income inequality first.
But Beckstein said just starting at the community level through choosing to spend money through local, cost-conscious and circular-economic businesses like the tool library or gear exchange is a great place to start shifting toward a more equitable economic and political model.
“Think locally but act globally,” he said. “That becomes a really radical shift.”
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