: What it does mean is that all multinationals depend on the same class of people to be its worker and its consumer. Thus a cycle is created in which ultimately all wage money is returned to the multinational.
: After all, The Gap, Exxon, McDonald's, Blockbuster video, The Body-Shop and Walmart are all one-in-the-same.
: If this is still hard to swallow, allow me to use my own experience as an example.
: I live in a suburb of New York City. I live in what would be deemed a "working-class" neighborhood. My neighborhood is litered with multinationals. There are McDonalds and Burger Kings (which I always assumed was British owned),Burger King is an American company, created in Miami in 1954. It's headquarters are still there. However It was aquired by a British corporation in 1989. So BK is an american company owned by a British company
: The local economy is dependent upon these multinationals, since they have pushed every "mom and pop shop" out of business. As soon as this "boom" is over in America, I imagine many people will be out of work and there will be many empty store fronts ruining the once beautiful landscape. The local economy, as you pointed out so well, is unstable as a result.
That "Boom" will never be over. Suburbanization (with its strip malls, fast food places etc..) has been around since the world war 2 days and over 50% of the american population lives there, so if anything, it will be growing (which it is) I'm not saying that I like the suburbanization of the countryside, but realistically it is happening and will never stop. These multinationals will be around for a long time, longer than you and I.
: However, in more wealthy neighborhoods, these architectural monstrosities are almost non-existant. Instead of the ugly strip mall with its huge parking lots, they have boutiques and upscale stores, privately owned and one-of-a-kind.
Right, so the rich who own these upscale-one of a kind shops are spending there money in other upscale one of a kind shops. You argued before that it was the multinationals evil plan for the money they pay thier workers with to spend it at other multinationals, now I can argue that it is the rich one-of-a-kind shop owners' evil plan for the money they pay thier workers with to be spent in other rich one-of-a-kind shops.
: AND, if one of these wealthy neighborhoods do need a strip mall with a supermarket and a Blockbuster, town ordinates of these areas are so strict, that they must be done "tastefully"--often lined with trees and flower-beds, and architecturally "pleasant".
: "Working-class" neighborhoods don't have the luxury of setting up ordinates simply because the population is too large to unite properly, and has too little money to have real power. Plus, now that the small shop-keeper is a relic of the past, our local economy depends on these unstable multinationals.
The only reason why the economy might depend on the multinationals is because the consumer chose to shop thier and not the mom and pop shop. Don't blame the multinational when it is the consumers who want them in the first place.
The multinational corporation was at one time a mom and pop shop (before it became a corporation). Burger King for instance (I work there so I know about them) started out as a single store owned by a family man. Typical mom and pop small business. His dream was to have a chain of Burger Kings. Over 85% of Burger Kings are franchises, ranging in size from 1 restaurant to hundreds of restaurants per franchise. Since so many of them are owned by regular people and not a corporation, you can say that they are mom and pop shops. I'm from Long Island and even though it is chock full of shopping centers, there are hundreds of small businesses on Main streets throughout The Island, and I love supporting those small businesses.
None.
