Amazon’s Stranglehold: How the Company’s Tightening Grip on the Economy Is Stifling Competition, Eroding Jobs, and Threatening Communities

Date: 29 Nov 2016 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Amazon has extended its tentacles across our economy. In this report, we pull back the curtain on the company, and find that it’s at the center of increasing inequality and diminishing opportunity, and that it’s concentrating power in ways that endanger competition, community life, and democracy. We also examine how public policy should address Amazon’s high costs.… Read More

Big, Empty Boxes

Date: 15 Jan 2009 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Abandoned big-box stores, dead and dying strip malls and empty storefronts are about to join foreclosed houses as one of the defining features of the American landscape in 2009. It will be tempting to blame the weak economy for all of this wreckage. But the recession has merely been the trigger. This avalanche of vacant retail, much like the mortgage crisis, has been a long time in the making. … Read More

Local Costume Shops Battle Temporary Halloween Superstores

Date: 28 Oct 2005 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

The vast multitudes of empty big-box stores, darkened malls, and vacant strip shopping centers that now litter the American landscape are being commandeered by a growing number of temporary Halloween superstores. "We call them 30-day wonders," said Debbie Lyn Owens, who owns a costume shop in Sunnyvale, California, and heads the National Costumers Association (NCA), which represents 600 locally owned costume stores. … Read More