Letter to the Editor: Economics are ALWAYS Personal

A response to the opinion column, "I Crossed the King Soopers Picket Line Because the Strike Wasn't Personal" by Krista Kafer, published in the Denver Post on January 22, 2022

We live in a free market economy. Well…that’s not entirely true, but for simplicity’s sake, most things we buy in our day-to-day lives follow the supply and demand curve, including our grocery stores.

In this free market, as consumers, every dollar that we spend serves as an endorsement of a company, its values, and those that spearhead its decision-making process. While getting too caught up in this can be exhausting (most of the time, I have too much on my plate to cross-check the ethics of every dollar I spend), it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

I’ve spent the last 7 years studying economics in some form or other, and while I can’t deny that the subject is immensely complicated, what I do know for sure is that every economic act has an effect on at least one, if not thousands of people.

I’m not going to make any attempts to hide it, I supported the King Soopers strikers. I don’t think it’s fair that there were essential workers living in poverty while their CEO got an X raise in the middle of a pandemic. There’s a great deal more nuance and complication than that, but overall that’s where I stand. As a joint graduate student retail worker, it was difficult for me to avoid crossing the picket line, but I did it. I took the time and effort to make it work because I made the decision that it was more important for me to support those strikers than it was for me to have the convenience of a one-stop grocery trip. Even when that meant penny-pinching, trading out some groceries for others, and making trips to multiple stores. That was a very small price to pay when it came to truly putting my money where my mouth is and showing solidarity to workers like me, who were asking for things that seemed totally reasonable in my opinion. I understood that where I spent my money was going to affect other people, and I took responsibility for that.

For some people, it’s not realistic to avoid crossing a picket line, and I understand, but for those of us who have the choice, the ways we as members of the free market spend our money have an effect on other people. It is Ms. Kafer’s choice to cross the picket line, and while I vehemently disagree with her, it is her right to make that decision. But to say that making that decision is not personal is simply false.

So here is an incredibly basic economics lesson:

All goods flow through some version of labor —> distributor —> consumer. Sometimes you skip or combine the first two steps, but it always ends with the consumer. One of the first things you learn in economics is that the consumer is an important and necessary part of the process. And that’s kind of a big responsibility. Due to the fact that we live in a generally capitalist and mostly free market economy, we really do have a lot of choices in what we choose to purchase and where to choose to purchase it. It is a burden and a privilege of living where we do, and I do not take that lightly.

I’ve seen a lot of people, including Ms. Kafer, throw around the word “entitled” when it comes to the strikers and those of us who support them. I don’t think that’s true at all, I think a much better word is “responsible”. In deciding to strike, those King Soopers workers were taking responsibility for their own livelihoods and whatever consequences might have come from that. In refusing to cross the picket line, I and others have taken responsibility for the outcomes of a successful agreement, including the understanding that we might pay a little just to make sure hard workers aren’t living on the street. I only hope those who had the choice but decided to cross the picket line anyway can take responsibility for the consequences of their actions too. Every economic choice we make affects other people. Just because we don’t always see the immediate effects of our choices does not mean we can skirt the responsibility that they bring.