Small Retailers pushed into Bankruptcy. US Government Subsidies to Chain Companies

[Joanne98]

Small retailers the nation over are being pushed out of business by government subsidies to chain competitors such as Wal-Mart and Target through a variety of “corporate socialism” schemes, taxation authority David Cay Johnston says.

Municipalities are permitting “tax increment financing” that allow the big chains “to keep the sales taxes that you are forced to pay at the tax register,” Johnston said on the television interview program “Books of Our Time,” sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and broadcast by Comcast.

“Instead of that money going to the schools and the fire department and the police department and the library, it is funneled through a mechanism of local government, usually a special authority, to finance the purchase of municipal bonds so that means that the wealthy underwriters and the lawyers and auditors all get a piece of this money to buy the land and build the store,” Johnson told TV host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.

The store is then leased to the big chain developer “at terms that amount to giving it to them for free or nearly free over a period of time,” Johnston said, “and it’s destroying local business.” An amazing aspect of this “corporate socialism” policy, Johnston says, “is that local business owners have not risen up and stopped this.”
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/small-retailers-pushed-into-bankruptcy-us-government-subsidies-to-chain-companies/

[havocmom]

1. When I think of all the small business owners I have known who support the GOP

and treated workers like crap, it's hard to feel sorry for them, but, I do. The corporations running things want ALL the marbles and thay means putting small companies outta bidness!

[Zodiak]

2. We need to redefine "small business"

This may be a tangent, and if it is, I apologize. However, we define a "small business" as any business that has less than 500 employees. A business that has over 100 employees, to me, stretches the definition, much less than 500.

We need targeted legislation to help small local business prosper. Our economy has turned into a nightmare, and our capacity to produce, compete, and innovate needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. That starts with small businesses....the REAL small ones, and they are getting killed right now.

As far as addressing the OP directly..yeah, we need to remove the influence of large corporations on our government at all levels. This laissez faire crap has got to end. Everyone has their hands in the cookie jar except for regular people.

[mother earth]

3. We are in the age of corporate welfare, while the republicans,

you know - the millionaires or the suckers...figure out anyone here in the USA is screwed. This comes down to patriotism, that little flag they love to wave, while they spew their rote beliefs...

It's all about to unravel, I've got a feeling people, even the wealthiest among us, will wise up and their motto will change from "let them eat cake" to "give me liberty or give me death". It's too bad it is taking all of this to wake up those sleep-walkers. No one benefits from the dissolution of the dollar but the largest criminals, and those will need to seek refuge in another country...as there will be no haven for them once the masses awaken.