Why We Can’t Shop Our Way to a Real Economy

Wresting control of the real economy from corporate banks, commodity crops, and big-box retail means reversing policies that concentrate power at the top.

By Stacy Mitchell, adapted from her TEDx talk at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, October 20, 2012
March/April 2013 

 

At its core, the Boston Tea Party was an act of corporate sabotage. Those ships were owned by the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation of its day. The Company was tightly connected to the British government, so much so that when it stumbled and found itself teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, Parliament quickly stepped in and passed the Tea Act. The Tea Act created a special exemption for the British East India Company so that it could sell tea in the colonies without paying any tax. The idea was that it could undercut local tea merchants and take their business. So what ignited the Boston Tea Party was not so much a tax, but a corporate tax loophole.