Santa Barbara County faces a stark reality: we have the second-highest poverty rate in California, with one in six adults and one in five children living in poverty. Nearly 60 percent of jobs in our county are “non-opportunity” positions with no clear path to a livable wage, including 94 percent of agricultural jobs, 89 percent of food service jobs, and 82 percent of health-care support positions. (See canva.com, pp 23, 35.) As a local small business owner, I was excited to hear ideas at January 24’s Upward Mobility Summit co-hosted at S.B. City College and Alan Hancock College.
The summit began with a powerful keynote from sociologist and author Matthew Desmond that resonated deeply with my observations as a local business owner. Desmond’s work highlights how the consolidation of economic power and systemic labor exploitation perpetuate poverty, explaining why seemingly straightforward solutions like minimum wage increases often fail to create lasting change when underlying power imbalances remain unaddressed.
This concentration of power didn’t happen by accident. For decades, government has allowed consolidated economic interests to write rules that continually increase the advantage of the largest — not just over workers, but over small, independent businesses. Through policy decisions and regulatory changes, large corporations have gained unprecedented control over markets, while programs intended to help workers often end up primarily benefiting these same powerful interests. When undercompensated workers do achieve gains such as minimum wage increases, there is little to prevent the economically powerful from “extracting” those gains through opportunistic increases in costs of goods and services that workers need to fulfill their basic needs.
Having operated a food business locally for six years, I’ve experienced firsthand how these power imbalances shape market dynamics. Small independent businesses find themselves caught between two impossible pressures: paying substantially more to provide products and services because they cannot demand the supplier discounts that large businesses can, while facing consumer price expectations set by economically powerful companies that engage in worker exploitation. These structural imbalances mean that small business owners become trapped in a “scarcity mentality” that reflects the near impossibility of providing better compensation without risking their own economic well-being or the survival of their business.
While I applaud the summit’s attention to these challenges, I am concerned about two critical perspectives missing from the conversation:
First, the voices of small business owners, particularly those who are actively trying to improve job quality and worker compensation in agriculture, hospitality, and health care. These entrepreneurs bring direct experience with both the challenges and opportunities for improving job quality and sustainability. As active participants in our local economy, they can help evaluate which proposed strategies would genuinely enable fair compensation, and which ones might miss the mark.
Second, the voices of community members who want to be conscious consumers when spending on food, caregiving, and other basic needs. Lasting systemic solutions will require residents who aren’t currently caught in the scarcity trap to faithfully support businesses committed to providing fair compensation. The voices of committed community members will help us understand how to support the kinds of transparency about compensation practices that can help consumers connect spending choices with values.
Can a small group of committed businesses and consumers really make a difference? Meaningful change often starts small — new approaches that prioritize fair compensation with just a few committed businesses and customers can succeed precisely because they operate at a human scale, where direct relationships between workers, businesses, and customers create space for different economic choices. As these small systems demonstrate what’s possible, their approaches can be adapted and replicated, eventually creating an interconnected network of communities each operating at a scale where sustainable, equitable practices can take root.
As our region makes choices about how to invest our share of economic development funding through programs like California Jobs First, we must be vigilant to ensure that these resources truly “raise the floor” rather than just helping a lucky few “climb the ladder” while benefits flow to already-advantaged interests. This means developing infrastructure and support systems that help workers, community members, and small businesses challenge the consolidated power structures that keep them trapped in scarcity.
The summit kicked off a two-year planning process organized around five working groups focused on different aspects of economic mobility. Small business owners and conscious consumers — please join these groups! Without your perspectives, we risk repeating past efforts that failed to create lasting change despite significant investments. To add your voice to this important conversation and help build an economy that works for everyone, sign up to participate here.
Let’s stop watching from the sidelines while inequality grows in our community. It’s time for all of us to pitch in and help redesign our economy so that everyone can thrive.
Stacy Rebich Hespanha, PhD, is cofounder of Flourish Local and Loca Vivant Kitchen in Santa Barbara.
