03.14.07
Economic Dev. Agencies
Have you ever wondered why it is that your town, city, or county will spend large sums of money to attract one of those mega-retailers which mostly take sales away from existing businesses (often locally-owned, smaller businesses) and which ship a substantial part of that revenue to other areas?
I have observed our local town and cities spending thousands of dollars every year on programs to attract large companies from other Southern California cities. I cannot see the attraction. With tax discounts for the first few years, those large companies are shifting their burdens onto your local employees and small businesses.
I believe that one local city had even offered at one time to sell land to a large employer for around $1 per acre. Yet, the smaller businesses which were likely to stay and be long-term contributors to the local economy had to pay full price for any land they got.
It has been said that the “top 500″ companies have been cutting jobs overall since the 1970s. This means that nearly all of the job growth in our country has been from smaller businesses. We need to track down the source of this information. (I have been looking, but have not yet found it.) Once we have the source, we need to find out just how accurate the claim is–if it is verifiable, we need to put it on billboards along major highways, put it in drive-time commercials on major radio stations, and take out half-page ads in local newspapers. Policy-makers need to know that the best way to strengthen the local economy is to build up the local small businesses.
Instead of spending thousands or even millions of dollars each year to attract out-of-area corporations, our local governments need to use that money to help start and build up locally-owned businesses. In doing so, they will reap a harvest.
Remember that nearly every large business started out as a small business. By taking care of smaller businesses, we will be “seeding” future large businesses in our local areas.
In these policy perspectives, it is my hope to spur debate and to encourage some members of the public to begin to advocate for these issues with their local, state/province/regional, and national governments. The big boys have their lobbyists. We have to depend upon active and interested participation by people like ourselves in order to counter the special preferences that these larger companies seek.
