<p>Scotland County, North Carolina business owners are toughing it out, but negative population demographics, exploding property taxes, government subsidized competition and neighbouring counties willing to offer better services at lower prices are stiff headwinds to buck.</p>
<p>Even local used car dealers, which had been considered largely immune from current trends, are beginning to experience sales erosion, as buyers increasingly go online (in some cases to dealers hundreds of miles away) for the largest selection, best pricing and lowest cost financing. Online dealers often offer free delivery right to your door and guarantee the vehicle is exactly as advertised. This trend is still in its infancy, but it's moving fast and is about to shake things up big time.</p>
<p>We used to spend over $2000 per month shopping in Scotland County. Today, we don't spend a dime. We haven't shopped in the county for over two years now because we found too many businesses were simply not doing their best to help themselves or their community. Despite Laurinburg citizens being up in arms over the city's spending millions of dollars they didn't have on an extravagant new municipal complex they didn't need, most businesses chose to remain silent while this disaster played out.</p>
<p>Money wasted on this boondoggle meant hard pressed taxpayers wouldn't have as much money to spend at local business for the next forty years while the bonds were being paid off, but the business community didn't seem to care. Heck, if business owners themselves didn't care... why should we?  </p>
<p>Bad apples spoil the entire barrel. We used to regularly do business with a local Laurinburg machine shop. They were absolutely great, their pricing was fair and they never said no to any project we brought them. Unfortunately, once we stopped shopping in Laurinburg, this meant we needed to find a new machine shop too. We did, and the machine shop wasn't the only good local business that lost our trade.</p>
<p>We discovered that even Wal-Mart pricing is lower in neighbouring counties, and they can't even begin to compete with Aldi and Lidl's rock bottom pricing. We save almost 40% on our food bill alone by shopping elsewhere. This not only makes up for the increased gasoline and wear and tear, but allows us to have a nice, relaxing sit down lunch for free. Who said there was no free lunch?</p>
<p>Things are going to get even tougher for businesses who refuse to understand what's going on and are unwilling to learn what must be done to survive and thrive in tomorrow's economy.</p>
<p>CCN pays close attention to rapidly changing economic and social trends. We hope you will find this video helpful. As always, you decide.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<center><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CEvckj8hmKc" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></center>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333;"><em><strong>Sources:</strong></em></span><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/GordonTLong" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><span style="color: #0000ff;">Gordon T. Long</span></a></p>
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