3c hapter - Index of

58 Locavesting
havens. Google, the search giant whose motto is Do No Evil, has
saved more than a billion dollars a year in taxes for the past three
years by shifting income to tax havens and expenses to countries
with higher corporate tax rates. 27
Even some corporate champions are disturbed. Michael Porter,
the noted Harvard business professor and corporate strategist, for
one, is urging change. “Corporations are widely perceived to be
prospering at the expense of the broader community,” he wrote in
a January 2011 article urging a more inclusive approach to creating
value. 28 A recent Pew poll found that two- thirds of Americans say
they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confi dence in small business,
compared to just 19 percent who are confi dent about big
business. (The only group to rate lower in the poll was Congress. 29 )
Sitting atop their growing fi efdoms, the nation’s CEOs have
enjoyed staggering pay increases. Walmart’s CEO makes more in
an hour than some of his employees will earn in a year, according
to one calculation. 30 CEO pay is emblematic of a troubling
rise in income inequality. The past decade has been very good
to the super rich. The top 1 percent of the country’s population
grabbed 23.5 percent of all pretax income in 2007, up from less
than 9 percent in 1976. 31 Indeed, the top 1 percent of Americans
owns more than a third of the country’s private wealth—more
than the entire wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent. No wonder
pundits are likening the United States to a banana republic. 32
Rethinking Old Habits
Is this the kind of world we want? Just as every purchase is a vote,
every investment dollar carries a deeper message. If we care about
our communities, our middle class, and the future prosperity
of our country, we must rethink our behavior.
That’s starting to happen in some interesting quarters. With
cities, counties, and states saddled with crippling budget gaps, the
economics of local is gaining adherents among economic planners
and others.
This new view of economic development is sometimes referred
to as economic gardening, because it emphasizes nurturing a region’s