I am pleased to announce that the Greens are putting this policy into practice. Locally owned and operated shops create more jobs for every dollar of turnover than chain stores which send their profits out of town. Think of the local economy as a bucket into which money flows from local people and shops. If money is being siphoned off or the bucket is full of holes then the money will disappear pretty quickly. Make sure locally created wealth is reinvested in your town, to generate more jobs and improve the community's well-being.
Capital also leaks out of local economies.
The demise of Trustbank highlights the loss of local control over where people's savings are invested. There are other alternatives such as building societies' credit unions and organisations like Prometheus but these don't exist in every community or don't provide a full range of services. The Green Party is exploring the possibility of creating a new network of community banks to give people the chance to invest in a local bank which, in turn, would provide capital for local business ventures which are having increasing difficulty raising loans from conventional banks. Another significant 'leak' from the bucket are the tax dollars which the government siphons off. Reducing taxation is not the best way to plug this leak.