Flashes of Panic

I’m not a terribly political person, though like anyone, I have my issues I can get worked up about.

I had a Letter to the Editor published in this past Wednesday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette, which I’ll include below in the unedited form I sent to them. Two things led to my writing and sending this letter.

First, I read Stacy Mitchell’s Big Box Swindle, which reads like a polemic against big-box retailers and other national chains, but comes with meticulous end-notes and extensive research. (Much of the research owes its roots to the opposition to Wal-Mart in Greenfield, just up the river from us.) I won’t go over the book in detail, because it’s fractal; each supporting sentence is important as the paragraph it’s in, each paragraph vital to the chapters. The main assertions are this: Big-box chain retailers are ruining the prosperity of our cities and towns by replacing good jobs with bad ones, inefficiently using municipal services and dodging taxes when they can, while offering little price advantage and lower product quality compared to independent or locally-owned retailers. They enjoy several competitive advantages over the independents, yet give back significantly less to the communities in which they do business. I’ll let Mitchell expand on those points; dig up a copy of her book at your local bookstore (if you still have one).

Second, I got an email from my parents with a draft of a letter they sent to their local paper. It ran shortly before Thanksgiving, and my father told me he’d heard of at least one downtown merchant who had a customer promising to do all their holiday shopping at the local stores this year. (I can’t find their letter on the website now, but theirs isn’t the only one, and here’s what’s at stake.) The paper’s editorial page underlines the point inadvertently in an apparently-unrelated editorial. Notice that list of merchants at the end: not a national chain among them.

It’s worth considering more than just price when you do your holiday shopping.

At any rate, here’s the letter I sent to the Gazette:

To The Editor,

With the holiday shopping season looming over us, we should remind ourselves that where we do our shopping is just as important as how much we spend and what we buy.

Independent, local businesses provide more value to a community than just another store. They help us build and maintain our social networks and our sense of community. They return a large part of their revenue to the community in the form of taxes, charitable contributions, and salaries, are more likely to provide a market for locally-produced goods, and keep a larger share of their profits in town as well. Locally-owned businesses are more likely to advertise in local newspapers and radio and use local services. And the employees and owners of local, independent businesses are more likely to be passionate and knowledgeable about the market they’re in.

In recent decades, tax policies, our car culture and unfortunate planning decisions have led to more and more of our retail dollars being spent at national chains. Compared to these national chains, independent retailers employ more people at a living wage, but often have to compete at a financial disadvantage.

It’s tempting to think that in tough economic times, we can’t afford to ignore the supposedly lower prices offered by the chain retailers. Beyond the price tags, however, if times are truly tough and getting tougher, shouldn’t we be keeping our retail spending in our communities, where it can recirculate and employ our neighbors and strengthen our communities, rather than sending it to corporate headquarters elsewhere?

[signed]

I took my father’s advice and avoided making negative arguments against the big chains (my original closing sentence read, “sending it to Bentonville, Arkansas”) and I think I might have made sharper points if I’d left the text alone for a few days and then rewritten. But it says what I wanted it to say.