"The piece should be read not just as a sad tale of a preventable pandemic, but as a warning against building an economy based on any one employer." I'm curious about this... to some degree, this isn't intentional, right? Most small towns can only do so much to diversify their employers. And of course, you're not an advocate of towns offering lots of incentives to entice employers. I feel like they don't intentionally "base" their economy around one employer, they just don't have that many tools to avoid the issue, and having one big employer is better than having zero big employers?
Really good question. So let's put aside the places that DID explicitly engineer their whole economic strategy around bringing in one major firm, which certainly exist. (I'm thinking mostly of Southern towns poaching manufacturers, which dates back to the 1930s but still continues today, with automakers being the most prominent example.)
You're right that not everywhere that wound up in this situation did so intentionally. A better way to phrase my critique would have been "don't allow your economy to become reliant on one big corporation, particularly if it's a conglomerate based somewhere else," since that detachment opens a place up to more and varied shocks.
That's hard to pull off, of course, but policies aimed at encouraging small, local firms help. Today, too many places do the opposite, actively advantaging big employers versus smaller competitors: A simple example is that Home Depot and Lowes are always eligible for property tax breaks that rarely go to, say, a mom and pop hardware store or a local grocer.
Studies show that towns with more small, local businesses have more job growth, less poverty, etc. etc than those with fewer, bigger employers. I could probably spend several thousand words on what that exactly looks like. Maybe a future post!
"The piece should be read not just as a sad tale of a preventable pandemic, but as a warning against building an economy based on any one employer." I'm curious about this... to some degree, this isn't intentional, right? Most small towns can only do so much to diversify their employers. And of course, you're not an advocate of towns offering lots of incentives to entice employers. I feel like they don't intentionally "base" their economy around one employer, they just don't have that many tools to avoid the issue, and having one big employer is better than having zero big employers?
Really good question. So let's put aside the places that DID explicitly engineer their whole economic strategy around bringing in one major firm, which certainly exist. (I'm thinking mostly of Southern towns poaching manufacturers, which dates back to the 1930s but still continues today, with automakers being the most prominent example.)
You're right that not everywhere that wound up in this situation did so intentionally. A better way to phrase my critique would have been "don't allow your economy to become reliant on one big corporation, particularly if it's a conglomerate based somewhere else," since that detachment opens a place up to more and varied shocks.
That's hard to pull off, of course, but policies aimed at encouraging small, local firms help. Today, too many places do the opposite, actively advantaging big employers versus smaller competitors: A simple example is that Home Depot and Lowes are always eligible for property tax breaks that rarely go to, say, a mom and pop hardware store or a local grocer.
Studies show that towns with more small, local businesses have more job growth, less poverty, etc. etc than those with fewer, bigger employers. I could probably spend several thousand words on what that exactly looks like. Maybe a future post!