Today with all of the NAs, banking and the wealth it helps build is drawn away from the community to disinterested investors who live on the few percentage points that loans generate. The rural areas and small towns pay that interest to them. When a big box store moves in on an area, they come fully capitalized and ready to mine the money from the communities they serve. They don't lodge their revenues at a local bank and don't fund their store construction with local money that will keep a portion of the cost of operation in local hands.
When ones food come in a metal can from 1,000 miles away, little wealth is kept in the small towns. Local food works the other way. It keeps local money local and may bring wealth into the small economy. When Wal-mart locates 30 miles away from a dozen small towns and rural areas, all the clothing and appliance money leaves the community.
Sustainable economic activity depends on the ability of a dollar to recycle in the community several times before it evaporates. A dollar spent externally is gone at once. This is why many small communities try to trade on their status of being a place where people will come to spend their money. In the absence of MMFF to generate raw wealth, tourism and visitors provide the money the communities keeps spending externally. But if the town or area that is not much more than a few homes along a now bypassed highway, they have little hope of being such a place where people will come and spend money. A tiny strip mall or building supply center cannot sustain an entire community.
Not every town can be the home of an antiques market or an outlet market for several coat and shoe manufacturers. Unless there is a lake, a mountain with snow, a navigable river, vacation villas are not going to be built. Being too far out from an urban area is also a barrier to survival.
Other blog posts that are related in a Series
todays-reasons-to-exist
shared-history
reason-to-exist
factors-that-are-missing
sustainable-community
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