Big-Box Swindle
The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement.
Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal-Mart, and a Pennsylvania town's Main Street. She uncovers the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by large chains.
More than a critique, Big-Box Swindle draws on real life to show how some communities are successfully countering the spread of mega-retailers and rebuilding their local economies. Mitchell describes innovative approaches-from cutting-edge land-use policies to small-business initiatives-that together provide a detailed road map to a more prosperous and sustainable future.
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Mitchell, chair of the American Independent Business Alliance, has produced a compelling indictment of Wal-Mart and other "big box" stores, based on numerous national examples. Deep-pocketed chains like Home Depot flood the market to drive out competition, she points out, then advertise some products at or below cost, while most other products may offer no better value than at independent stores. Meanwhile, she argues, independent businesses not only return profits to local communities and remain more civic-minded and accountable, but offer resiliency rooted in diversity, in contrast to the big-box "monocrop." She even provides evidence that Wal-Mart lowers, rather than boosts community economic well-being, and that firms with fewer than 100 employees give twice as much in charity per employee as those with more than 500 workers. Mitchell challenges Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory, suggesting that an indie bookseller's passion about a product can be more critical to its sales than wide access via a Web retailer. Mitchell catalogues diverse ways indie-minded consumers can fight back, by campaigning against government subsidies to big-box stores, and advocating for sales tax collection on Internet sales and stronger antitrust enforcement. Visible citizens' coalitions can fight big-box expansion, especially if communities fine-tune their land use policies. The big-box trend, she suggests, can be countered by increasing public awareness.
