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**JANUARY 19, 2024**
On the Prospect website
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How Boeing Ruined the JetBlue-Spirit Merger
The judge's ruling in the case revealed all the deficiencies in
the manufacturing and distribution of commercial air travel. BY DAVID
DAYEN
Billionaire Pohlad Family Accused of Using Anti-Worker Construction
Contractors
The Minneapolis-based developer has not done enough to ensure good labor
practices throughout its supply chain, critics say. BY SARAH LAZARE
[link removed]
Dollar General Overcharges 'Hundreds of Thousands' of Customers,
Lawsuit Alleges
The prices paid at the register do not match the price tags,
according to a class action lawsuit working through the courts. BY
RAMENDA CYRUS
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Saving Local Retail
Wisdom from Justice Louis Brandeis
Having turned local drugstores into chains dominated by a few giants,
CVS and Walgreens are now closing hundreds of stores in order to
maximize profits
.
The drugstore chains are also under fire for their mistreatment of
pharmacy technicians and deteriorating service, as well as
conflict-ridden mergers with pharmacy benefit managers and insurers.
Drugstores are not just another business. They are part of the health
system and the fabric of local community life.
One great American saw this coming-a century ago. I teach at a
university named for Justice Louis Brandeis, whose wisdom during his
Supreme Court service (1916-1939) was often in dissent. Both off the
Court and on, Brandeis fought the dangers of economic concentration. Two
of his early books were
**The Curse of Bigness** and
**Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It**.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the first wave of chain stores, with their
marketing and pricing power, were undermining downtowns and locally
owned retail. In 1931, the state of Florida, in an effort to help local
retail resist the tide of chain stores, passed a law requiring all
retailers to get licenses from the state, and pay fees for the licenses
graduated according to the size of the company. In the 1933 case Liggett
v. Lee , the
Supreme Court, 6-3, found the law an unconstitutional interference with
freedom of commerce.
Brandeis disagreed. In his magnificent dissent, he included a long
history of how states had long limited the absolute freedom of
corporations and only recently had permitted corporations to do whatever
they wanted. This was all constitutional. And after noting the
increasing degree of corporate concentration among the top 200
corporations, he added this very Brandeisian comment:
Among these 200 corporations, each with assets in excess of $90,000,000,
are five of the plaintiffs ... they operate, in the several states, an
aggregate of 19,718 stores. A single one of these giants operates nearly
16,000. Against these plaintiffs, and other owners of multiple stores,
the individual retailers of Florida are engaged in a struggle to
preserve their independence-perhaps a struggle for existence.
The citizens of the state ... have undertaken to aid the individual
retailers by subjecting the owners of multiple stores to the handicap of
higher license fees. They may have done so merely in order to preserve
competition. But their purpose may have been a broader and deeper one.
They may have believed that the chain store, by furthering the
concentration of wealth and of power and by promoting absentee
ownership, is thwarting American ideals; that it is making impossible
equality of opportunity; that it is converting independent tradesmen
into clerks; and that it is sapping the resources, the vigor and the
hope of the smaller cities and towns.
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Brandeis's critics dismissed him as sentimental or oblivious to
convenience and efficiency.
But the trend that Brandeis was combating a century ago was tame
compared to what has been happening lately.
Today, local retail and local downtowns are under assault as never
before. The forces include Amazon and other online shopping, the
purchase and destruction of smaller retail chains by hedge funds, the
lingering effect of the pandemic depopulating office buildings and
retail customers, and the proliferation of cookie-cutter malls where
every store is part of a national chain, making every mall look like
every other mall.
The "efficiency" of giant scale supposedly cuts costs to consumers. But
the hyper-concentration raises costs.
In this larger trend, pharmacies are a special case. I am fortunate that
my local family-owned pharmacy still operates. I can get a pharmacist on
the phone. They know my name and I know theirs. They help me chase
doctors who are late with refills, and advance me a couple of pills when
refills are late. They even deliver. But they are a vanishing breed.
Though the Supreme Court, in
**Liggett v. Lee**, prohibited higher fees on chain stores, government
is far from powerless. The revival of antitrust could break up monopoly
chains. (Brandeis was also an eloquent proponent of antitrust.) Amazon
could be charged for all the costs that its trucks impose on roads and
pollution. A law proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren would prohibit hedge
funds from bleeding local retail. In France, a pharmacy must be owned by
a licensed pharmacist
,
who may own only one.
Let the Brandeisian retail counterrevolution begin.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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