Mega-businesses, like JC_Penny, Walmart, Nordstroms, and similar do open up in an area, but all profit gets siphoned elsewhere. It makes wherever $BigCo's Headquarters much richer at the expense of every community they go into.
Whereas, the little one and two store local business takes money from local people, and its turned right around and reinvested in that very community.
One drains a community of its wealth, while the other bolsters it.
Politicians have always (in recent years) accepted that $BigCo moving in is an absolute boon. And the politicians award the business with abatements, tax writeoffs, and other vehicles to "sweeten the deal". But none of the small businesses have these connections. Nor can they request abatements, or low to 0 interest loans.
But as we see, once a chain starts haemorrhaging, every community with one of these carcasses ends up rotting the whole area at its core.
> Whereas, the little one and two store local business takes money from local people, and its turned right around and reinvested in that very community.
It's a common one, but I don't really buy this argument. Small local businesses don't usually hire more people than large chains and they don't pay their employees more. Small shops are notorious for low pay and no benefits.
In the case of a discounter like Walmart the profits don't get siphoned elsewhere as much as never spent in the first place. There may not be a local shop owner anymore, but everyone else in the community has spent less money.
Just to add to this, WalMart is primarily a grocery store. Like most grocery stores, it has a net profit margin that hovers around 3%.
The Waltons are not rich because each WalMart vacuums money out of a community. The Waltons are rich because there is a metric shit-ton of stores that do a high volume of business, and they get their 2-3% slice of it.
Mega-businesses, like JC_Penny, Walmart, Nordstroms, and similar do open up in an area, but all profit gets siphoned elsewhere. It makes wherever $BigCo's Headquarters much richer at the expense of every community they go into.
Whereas, the little one and two store local business takes money from local people, and its turned right around and reinvested in that very community.
One drains a community of its wealth, while the other bolsters it.
Politicians have always (in recent years) accepted that $BigCo moving in is an absolute boon. And the politicians award the business with abatements, tax writeoffs, and other vehicles to "sweeten the deal". But none of the small businesses have these connections. Nor can they request abatements, or low to 0 interest loans.
But as we see, once a chain starts haemorrhaging, every community with one of these carcasses ends up rotting the whole area at its core.