Made in "Your Country Here" ; Is it important to you?

[eppie]

I must now go a few miles out of my way to get to the nearest market. Some new entrepreneur may decide to re-open a mini-mart (making me happy), or bull doze it and put in some other business that may be more successful (making me sad). I think what Shadow and I are describing may actually be more unselfish. The neighbor right next to me, has been self employed laying carpet for his entire career. I would never think of using anyone else when I have the need, even if they were much cheaper (and they are not). In the end, we both win, and we both feel better about being good neighbors.

I agree with this but we are confusing things now. Both big industry and local shop owners can sell local products or products from China.

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You are much richer because e.g. your land prices (for building a house for example) are probably 10 times cheaper than in Holland.....that is if you want to live close to a big city.....otherwise it is probably 1000 times cheaper.

If land prices are high, that means a country is rich, not poor, because nearly all countries own nearly all of their own land. Land prices in Monaco are crazily high. Land prices in Chad are trivial.

The international comparison is a little tricky, because of course it's very difficult to compare like with like - there is nowhere like Nunavut in the Netherlands, so what would it usefully mean that you could buy an enormous slice of permafrosted tundra for the same price as an apartment in Utrecht? Similarly, you can't compare a farm in Friesland with a skyscraper in Toronto. If we compare downtown property with downtown property, I suspect you'll find the gap is not even very large between North American cities and European ones, although it does of course depend on a lot of factors. And while North American cities tend to have extensive suburbs, the Netherlands just has more cities.

-Jester

It also means a country is small and has many inhabitants.
My point is however that you have a much larger potential wealth. When we will hit some big food crisis in the near future you will be happy to live in a big country with lots of terrain.......and that permafrost is gone in 20 years anyway.