Big-Box Swindle The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses

by Mitchell, Stacy

• ISBN13: 9780807035016
• ISBN10: 0807035017
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-01
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

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 fuelling 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.

Author Biography

Stacy Mitchell is a regular speaker and advisor to communities on retail development and independent business. A senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, she chairs the American Independent Business Alliance . Mitchell regularly contributes articles and commentaries to magazines and newspapers, and produces an acclaimed monthly email newsletter, The Hometown Advantage Bulletin. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Chain Store World	p. 3
Fading Prosperity	p. 33
Community Life	p. 73
Blighted Landscape	p. 101
Sometimes Low Prices	p. 127
Monopolized Consumers	p. 138
Uncle Sam's Invisible Hand	p. 163
Communities Unchained	p. 192
Declaration of Independents	p. 223
Acknowledgments	p. 259
Notes	p. 260
Index	p. 299
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