MSJ Highlights: Quarter Two
Enjoy these highlights from our past quarter of The Main Street Journal and MSJ Extra! issues.
Our MSJ Extra! interviews highlight prominent policymakers, book authors, and other rabble-rousers.
In April, The Main Street Journal proposed a response to Trump’s tariff wars: Inoculate your community from the increasing unpredictability of the global economy by becoming as local as possible, as fast as possible.
The new mantra for localization should be “innovate locally, share globally.” Every business design that helps a city become a little more self-reliant, whether in food, energy, or bicycles, should be shared and spread with every other community around the world. As this sharing network expands, communities will benefit from best practices across the world. This is already happening informally and formally through organizations like the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives and COPx. These networks should be deepened and integrated with local economic development policy.
We shared why nonprofits are awful business structures for changing the world in May.
One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed teaching for nearly a decade at Bard’s Green MBA Program is that most of my business students today understand the defects of nonprofits. My generation thought social change was working for Public Citizen at starvation wages and begging mommy and daddy for care packages. This generation is formulating for-profit business designs to solve critical global problems. The mission is driven not by profit, but by finding long-term, self-financing tools for social change. And the business structures they favor are increasingly co-ops, employee ownership trusts, or just creatively structured LLCs.
June included an issue highlighting the folly of the corporate “incentives” game.
Corporate subsidies, even with a cornucopia of community benefits, are now paying nonlocal companies $500,000 to $1 million per job created. As I document in my book, The Local Economy Solution, local businesses often create jobs for about $1,000-$2,000 of incentive money, and some well-designed economic development programs, like certain types of business incubators, can create jobs while actually making money. A 2021 study from Nova Scotia showed that government incentives around investment in local businesses wind up costing about $500 per job created. When opportunity costs are considered, corporate attraction is always a dumb choice for economic development.
As always, if you want more news, please subscribe to The Main Street Journal through this link. Thank you for your support!