Justin Fox, Columnist

Fighting the Economic Power of the Coastal Elite

Efforts to keep jobs and wealth from concentrating have been out of fashion.

August 31, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Remember Main Street?
Photographer: Jay LaPrete/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Back when it was home to a DHL shipping hub, Wilmington, Ohio (population: 12,449 and shrinking), seems like it was a lively little city. In 2007, a local bookstore, Books ‘N’ More, threw a release party for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” that drew 10,000 people downtown.

DHL left in 2008. Books ‘N’ More closed in 2014. But now Amazon.com is beginning to use Wilmington’s airport for its own delivery airplanes. In his Bloomberg Businessweek cover story this week about Amazon’s shipping offensive, Devin Leonard recounts a funny little exchange illustrating the mixed feelings that this generates. John Stanforth is Wilmington’s 71-year-old mayor. Marian Miller and Bret Dixon are local officials who are extremely enthusiastic about having Amazon in town.