Step foot in small towns across America and you will find acres of big box stores that have desolated the local economy. Much like the small town I grew up in central Kentucky, the American dream of owning a small business has died because of this.
Small towns have been devastated by the oligarchy that has taken shape today. The mega-corporations that bring “millions of jobs” to your small town. For many people, it’s exciting to get the mega-chains you see in big cities, until the devastation sets in.
The day soon will come when the headquarters hundreds of miles away decides that maybe your job is on the chopping block because profits are down. This is well after the box store has driven local competitors out of business and there is no one else to employ you. The suit in the headquarters doesn’t know you and quite frankly doesn’t care about your job, because they only care about returning profits to the shareholders.
When did the rhetoric of American business change from the individual to the corporation?
Well, a restaurant napkin may be the culprit.
Arthur Laufer is said to have come up with a supply side theory that would influence Regan-nomics trickle down theory in 1974. Georgetown Law reports Laufer scribbled on a napkin,“‘We’ve been taxing work, output, and income and subsidizing non-work, leisure and unemployment. The consequences are obvious!’”
This theory of trickle-down economics was supposed to bring benefits to all Americans. We assume all people are ethical entrepreneurs and businesses care about the communities they are arriving in when we give them massive tax breaks. Supply-side economics, at its core, cuts tax rates for the wealthy and theorizes that the nation’s wealthy will reinvest that money. Unfortunately, this is not our reality, and this thinking has left us to deal with the consequences for 50 years in the United States.
Reports from the Center for American Progress show how tax breaks to corporations have affected Americans. Tax breaks put into place by Ronald Regan and again by George W. Bush did not bring perks to the middle class; wages for workers fell lower than before the tax policy enactment. And when Bill Clinton enacted reforms that raised taxes for the rich in 1993, the economy did not slow down, it boomed and middle class incomes increased. Supply side showed that it in fact didn’t work when taken off the napkin into reality.
My grandmother worked at Walmart for fifty years in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Nowadays, Cynthiana doesn’t boast many stores other than Walmart. A town once bustling with a beautiful downtown is a ghost town today. Beautiful empty storefronts tell a story of an America where you could have a shop of your own. But the superstores beat them in pricing, rent went up and people went in droves to the exciting “supercenter.” Now the supercenter is the only choice.
This is the reality of America in many towns. Towns full of greed, back-door tax breaks and the promise of the American dream. A dream that has been repacked and rebranded by oligarchs sitting in offices miles away. These companies care about one thing: wealth and profits. You are a body making money, paying you the lowest wage possible so one day they can be let go based on impersonal data sets.
Gone are the days when you knew every place you shopped, where the product came from and who sold it, the days when your boss was your friend and understood your struggles. Days where there was no corporate ladder, no barriers to entry. A time when empathy and the workplace could co-exist and when entrepreneurs opened businesses to make change in their communities.
Let’s make one thing clear: entrepreneurship can be ethical. I have learned this at Miami University, through IMS 585 with Mark Lacker. Business can build communities and give back in ways such as philanthropic giving and the taxes generated from their existence. Businesses sponsor your local sports team, help build parks and partner to put on events in the community.
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To be an ethical entrepreneur is to understand that your growth and strategy should make positive change in your community, not your pockets. Earnings are a perk of being an entrepreneur, not a guarantee. We must teach people that the American dream is about building businesses to make change for all, not one group or individual.
We have let corporations “grow our communities” by pillaging talent and offering prices low enough to where local entrepreneurs can not compete all while paying middle class Americans pennies to their dollars. The American dream has become unattainable and contributed to the “brain drain” across our country. People are angry, frustrated and lost.
Unfortunately, much of America has forgotten about ethical entrepreneurs in the pursuit of wealth and the aggressive actions we see coming from Washington, D.C. Our government is cutting the taxes for the top and raising them for the bottom. So you can work for the elite from 9 to 5 for the rest of your life while the top 1% line their pockets. While we argue about the price of eggs, they control it.
The American dream is to own a shop, be the brand and live a life free of the constraints of a ruling class. We once explored the West, mined for gold and created our own communities for religious freedom. Now America is starting to look like a baron dystopia of mega brands owned by one conglomerate, something reminiscent of a George Orwell novel.
The dream should never be to sit at the desk for a company that could fire you on any given day. It’s an unfortunate reality. We need to step up to greedy oligarchs and restore the ethical entrepreneurial spirit of the American dream.
Landon Morrison is a senior at Miami University pursuing a combined bachelors and masters degree in entrepreneurship and emerging technology, having graduated with his bachelors in December 2024. He has aspirations to work in journalism or communications in the non-profit sector.
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