The basic issue is how concentration of wealth causes problems and inequities.
When one small group has concentrated wealth, it can play others against each other.
That's the basic issue in labor-owner relations; while in theory workers have some power of the choice where to work, in practice, without organized labor - which used to be illegal to protect owners' access to cheap labor - the bottom line was people have to eat, and wages often fell to 'just enough not to starve' and the worker's choice was just which employer with low wages to work at. The power was very much in favor of the owner against each individual, expendable, worker.
They didn't stand a chance - work for slave wages or starve was their choice - until they organized so that the owners had some larger price to pay if they wouldn't pay more.
That was the real birth of the middle class growing beyond a relatively small number.
The analogy here is that there are a lot more communities needing jobs, than there are big companies needing communities to locate their factories and other big offices.
Politicians tend to be afraid of not getting those jobs for their community - they're vulnerable to attack. And so they try very hard to get them, even making concessions and giving subsidies so large that it doesn't seem to make much sense, because they're competing with many other communities. Toss in some 'incentives' for the officials if needed and it's even worse.
That's not an easy one to solve. While like so many issues, it's easy to point out that more, smaller businesses helps with the balance of power and things work better, the efficiencies of large operations mean they're not going anywhere, probably. While some sort of 'organization' by communities would help, it's not very feasible, because among other reasons, unlike unions, it'd be difficult to deal with some communities 'going scab' and grabbing the deals, negating the effect of the collective bargaining.
Some federal laws prohibiting some of the worse abuses might help, but the compaies are more politically organized than the general public.
Another example of this effect of concentrating wealth is Wall Street's financial operations, such that the few people who are in the middle of it make many millions, where again, less concentration would lead to better balance, but lacking that, we have the situation where the finnce industry - basically overhead for the nation's economy - receives 30% of the nation's profits from all industries.
To ue Wal-Mart as an example, is it good for the nation for one company to be so large that it is a sort of 'wealth extractor' from communities across the nation, selling for low prices but costing that community more than it saved them as it feeds the tens of billions of dollars in profit at headquarters for perhaps the richest family in the world, by leaving fewer middle class businesses in those communities - is that a company strengthening the middle class, or reverting the days of poorer communities and concentrated wealth?
I'm not suggesting any simple approach here - I am just suggesting that people look for chances to take some steps to protect local businesses and keep the market competitive.
The revolution was largely fought over merchants unable to compete with Royal businesses given tax advantages (hence the Boston Tea Party over tea they had to pay taxes on but the Royal company did not). The massive buying power of big corporations allowing them t dictate to the suppliers, these subsidies by making communities compete for the big company sites, have a similar effect in creating massive competitive advantage for the big companies - with a big price.
Efforts to 'educate consumers' to 'shop local' have had limited success; efforts to 'educate voters' to vote for policies to protect local business have had occassional success.
I'm not sure what will help but we need to support the efforts to take some steps to keep the businesses serving consumer interests, not harming them through concentrated power.
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