The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [93]
Obviously, because so much of their manufacturing-related work has been outsourced overseas to lower-wage factories in regions with weaker environmental regulations and enforcement, the big-boxes have effectively eliminated thousands if not millions of jobs in American manufacturing. That was the “giant sucking sound” that U.S. 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot claimed NAFTA would create as scores of jobs disappeared from the U.S. economy and relocated to Mexico.97 (More recently, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman opined that “the Mexicans... are hearing ‘the giant sucking sound’ in stereo these days—from China in one ear and India in the other.”98)
All of this has fundamentally changed the landscape of this country. I mean that physically, with the total amount of retail space doubling between 1990 and 2005, from 19 to 38 square feet per person, and for every new square foot of store space, another 3 to 4 square feet paved for cars.99 But I also mean it socioeconomically: this country’s middle class, traditionally sustained by manufacturing jobs and small business ownership, has lost one opportunity after another while the rich accumulate unprecedented profits. So even with the nation’s overall economic growth, the gap between rich and poor keeps widening. CEO pay versus worker pay is just one indicator of this: In the 1970s, for example, the head of a large corporation earned 30 times as much as the average worker. By 1997, CEOs earned 116 times as much as the average worker. And by 2007, CEOs were earning nearly 300 times as much as the average worker.100
And in a cruel turn of a self-perpetuating cycle, as ordinary people have less income, the bargains promised by big-box stores are even more inviting, and so consumers support the very entity that is sucking the life out of their local economy and communities.
There’s some hope, though. Local communities have gotten hip to the deception and destruction of big-box development and have been organizing to fight new big-box stores in favor of local businesses, which provide more secure jobs and keep more of the money circulating in the local economy. The highly publicized case of Inglewood, California, going up against Wal-Mart itself was one such victory. In 2003, Wal-Mart planned to build a superstore covering an area the size of seventeen football fields in the town of Inglewood in Los Angeles County. After the city council effectively blocked Wal-Mart’s proposal, the company decided to bypass them and take the issue directly to the voters. To win folks over, Wal-Mart spent $1 million—a huge amount for a city with a population just over 110,000—and even went as far as handing out free meals to city residents. Yet to Wal-Mart’s surprise, in April 2004 Inglewood voters overwhelmingly rejected Wal-Mart’s plan, preventing the store from being built.101 While there were those who had looked forward to better access to bargain shopping, the community as a whole prioritized environmental, economic, and community well-being.
The victories in Inglewood and other communities remind me of one of the seminal events in establishing our independence as a country—the Boston Tea Party. To support local enterprise in the colonies, our plucky foremothers and forefathers boycotted tea from the East India Company, possibly the world’s most powerful transnational corporation at the time. Then they boycotted all British goods (even though it meant a little bit of hardship and the loss of access to some Stuff they were used to) as a step toward independence.