In her new book Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for Independent Businesses, Stacy Mitchell outlines the economic consequences of the proliferation of chain stores in our communities, from a loss of jobs to drops in local tax revenue. As part of a national tour, she will speak at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia Ave. in Tampa, at 7 p.m. on Nov. 16 in the lead-up to Tampa's America Unchained event on Nov. 18 (also at Inkwood Books). Between tour dates, Mitchell spoke with CL.

Creative Loafing: Isn't the proliferation of big-box stores just a result of good company practices?

Stacy Mitchell: The conventional wisdom is these companies have risen to dominance solely because of consumers' choices. But that's only part of the story. They've also been aided and abetted to a large degree by public policy. All levels of government have given big chains various kinds of benefits and favors and have very much undermined the survival of independent businesses.

CL: How do you tell the single mother below the poverty line that she should stop shopping at low-price leaders like Wal-Mart?

SM: It's important to note that these stores would not have attained the market share and revenue that they have right now if they were depending entirely upon people making in the bottom fifth of income. What is really challenging about this whole issue is that Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers present themselves as solutions to the problems that they have created. Over the last 15 years the share of income going to the middle class has shrunk, meanwhile we have a larger share of folks who are working poor. And I think there are strong correlations between that trend and the rise of big-box retailers. … They are eliminating exactly the kinds of [entrepreneurial and manufacturing] jobs that generations of Americans have used to pull themselves out of poverty. … I also think it's important to note the chains don't always have the lowest prices. There's a lot of evidence that in many situations they have higher prices than independents. And they also tend to come into markets with lower prices to start with and then they raise them over time.

CL: In your book, you highlight how citizens have successfully fought big-box stores from coming into their communities, but what can concerned residents do once the chains have already taken over?

SM: People often think, 'It's a done deal. They are already here.' But [big-box retailers] always want to develop stores. And if you think they've already built out in your community, think again. They want to take the stores they have right now and close them, and build stores twice as big down the road. … There's essentially a kind of arms race going on with these chain retail developers that keep wanting to build bigger and newer shopping centers that not only cannibalize sales from local businesses around town, but also from older shopping centers. And that game will continue on and on unless you as a community decide to put an end to it.

This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.