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Why Some US Cities are Fighting 'Dollar Stores' (eastbaytimes.com)
The Washington Post reports on why some U.S. cities are restricting the spread of discount "dollar stores":
Residents fear the stores deter other business, especially in neighborhoods without grocers or options for healthy food. Dollar stores rarely sell fresh produce or meats, but they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business...Grocery stores run on thin profit margins -- usually between 1 and 3 percent. And they employ more workers than dollar stores to keep perishable food stocked.
"It's no longer the big-box grocery store" that threatens local businesses, said David Procter, a Kansas State University professor who studies rural grocery stores. "But it's the discount retailer that's coming to town and setting up shop right across the street."
"As the stores cluster in low-income neighborhoods," the Post writes, "their critics worry they are not just a response to poverty -- but a cause."
"It's no longer the big-box grocery store" that threatens local businesses, said David Procter, a Kansas State University professor who studies rural grocery stores. "But it's the discount retailer that's coming to town and setting up shop right across the street."
"As the stores cluster in low-income neighborhoods," the Post writes, "their critics worry they are not just a response to poverty -- but a cause."
I thought this was America, where people have choice and freedom to choose what they want to eat. If they are choosing unhealthy shit, that's their choice. There will still be some supermarket if there is a demand.
The /. related links suggested the dupe to me. Seriously?
https://news.slashdot.org/stor....
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
They may have one isle with some canned food, but they're basically miniature versions of Walmart/general store and sell mostly houseware.
I don't know why anyone would *expect* them to have fruits or vegetables? Like, why don't they have a fish market or a bakery there too? How about a sushi bar?
Article is just wonderful. Stores are the reason why they are poor.... right. No no, these stores are bad because they sell stuff too cheap! Undercut prices for toilet paper, soap, coca cola and doritos! Have they considered that America is a free country and if it was profitable to sell fresh food, somebody would be selling. Further, a quick google MAP search uncovers a plenty of grocery shops all over Tulsa, OK, including northern part. The hero in the article, the politician, is clear about her background: never lived outside of town.....
If produce stores can't be profitable without also selling sundries, then I guess people don't want produce bad enough.
Near where I live, there's a produce store that is always jam-packed full of people. It's like Black Friday at Walmart, all day every day. So the "produce stores can't compete" argument is BS, they just need to make prices reasonable and aim for volume. Produce sections at other grocery stores I go to don't get much traffic, though, probably because the prices are ridiculous and apparently targeted at middle-class shoppers, even the non-organic stuff.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Dollar stores sell the very cheapest version of a very limited selection of products.
The cheapest cheap shit made in china crap. The cheapest version of foods.
If that runs ANY OTHER BUSINESS OUT OF THE AREA.
That business sucked donkey dick and didn't deserve to survive.
I like the dollar stores. They've my new stop for a whole 3 different items every week.
They have better prices! They have better access!
In and out. 5 minutes. no rewards cards. no coupons. no checkout lanes. no scan it yourself lanes. just one cashier to give money to.
Don't like that? Compete! or fuck off.
And if we WANTED fruits and vegetables and fresh. we'd get them.... WE DON'T.
Signed USA.
Land of mcdonalds.
Let Adam Smith's invisible hand adjust as needed.
Looks like the dollar stores sell various kinds of canned goods. Nutrionally, there's not much difference between canned and fresh.
Lets ban all forms of sales. Farmers markets are fresh and generally cheaper than the stores.
The chains they are trying to save will demand it or regulate them out of their cheap business. Use regulations to crush these guys.
I think Dollar stores provide a modern style general store of old selling a lot of staple items in places where people can get to them easily. Lot of people don't have cars, or have to use public transportation. I live in a town of 3000 and our Dollar General is much closer then the WalMart 20 miles away. Why would I travel 20 miles when the same items can be bought at a DG? Using their coupons and weekly saver items you can actually save money. Sadly were becoming a country where competition is bad, and that isn't a good thing for consumers.
ppl shouldnt have 2 pay 4 things like food and medesine that u need 2 survive thats just wrong and greeddy
If they ban the dollar stores they won't gave grocers move into their poor neighborhoods, they'll just have nothing. Last I checked there was another store that's worse and stalks low income places: the corner store. Maybe they can go back to those with their $5 milk. Surely, this will help the "poors" they claim to know so much about.
Dollar stores sell so many things. A specialty store never gets negative attention. Dollar stores are low quality and if people need to cut costs dollar stores fill a role. Specialty stores can also fill the same role but more because they provide quality in one area cheaply.
Sadly there are people who exist only on dollar store foods. The US grocery system is a mess and unable to provide food at sand prices. On top of all of that, sadly the US economic system is based upon competition and here we have a situation in which competition is stood on its ear. Normally if you are sharp enough to put a competitor out of business you are doing a really good job. Now if we want a start in fixing things simply disallow all export of produce and meats from US businesses and that would push down grocery prices quite a bit. For example sea food is now so expensive that we no longer have staff in the sea food department at my local Publix. If one wants a seafood section product usually one has to ask someone from the butcher section to meet you in the seafood department. Sea food is so expensive that very few patrons will purchase it.
The real problem is not paying people enough to live off of. These problems are being laid bare over and over again. The shutdown was a big deal because workers couldn't cover a lost paycheck. They had no savings. Same for the wells Fargo fiasco with direct deposits not going in on time. Food has never been cheaper or easier to obtain as adjusted for inflation. And yet people are still food insecure or have trouble affording nutritious food. We as a nation have been fucked five ways past Friday by the big corporations. Sure, they helped make food cheap. They also drove out the local farmer who can't leverage the economy of scale to compete with the cheap food, closing opportunities for families and small local operations to build their wealth. So much of my local farmland has been sold to developers who crap out cheap mcmansion after cheap mcmansion (sold at absurd prices of course). It's the last way the farming family can make a buck but it is also the end of their career.
So no, the problem isn't dollar stores or poor people leveraging their limited money to get the most calories. It's a systemic problem that has been going on for years.
Here in Montreal Dollarama sells some groceries like canned fish and vegetable juices but they are either slightly more expensive than in a grocery store or sold in smaller containers made just for Dollarama.
The canned food aisles in regular supermarkets are the least profitable part of the store.
Supermarkets make up for it by selling meat, vegetables and fruit and other fresh items at a healthy markup.
I buy some things at dollar stores because I can walk to the closest one, the closest supermarket is 3-4 miles away which is too much work in the winter.
I usually make a planned trip every few months to the three local supermarkets each of which has different things I buy, with vastly differing prices. In the winter months I'll stock up on frozen and canned vegetables.
During the growing season, I go to two local farm stores, prices there are usually a fraction of what produce is priced at local supermarkets. They don't have tropical fruit like oranges or bananas or kiwis, blackberries blueberries are available when they are ready.
Instacart finally came to our area, so I can use them on occasion like when the snow is too deep to walk anywhere.
I wish there was a local butcher store though.
If someone can create a business that serves the need, then more power to them. Maybe you can create a business that offers healthier choices at low prices, who knows. But you canâ(TM)t force the consumer. Remember government is FORCE. The only real tool it has is FORCE, and ultimately force comes at the end of the barrel of a gun. If you donâ(TM)t comply, ultimately someone will come break down your door. So I donâ(TM)t get how someone who is worried about the well being of people and society always gravitates towards government as the solution because that ultametly means the exact opposite.
What a dumb article, it is like saying "Red Spots on your skin is the cause of measles, so do not get red spots"
There are many causes of poverty, Dollar Stores are a symptom. No money is the cause of Poverty. Without a living wage how can one afford to shop elsewhere
There are some people who believe they have a right to profit. That doing what they did yesterday is going to work forever, and that they never need change anything at all. Those people don't deserve to stay in business.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is your system. How many times have I heard that businesses deserve to profit no matter what? Gee a person has to travel for 30 minutes to get healthy food or they can walk out their front door and get junk, I wonder what's going to happen? Suck it up buttercup, or change the system that preys on people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
How is this News for Nerds?
Is it because dollar stores sell electronic parts?
Or they have a wide selection of computer games?
They sell the latest laptops?
Or they have really advanced IT?
They compute bitcoin hashes with your body heat when you walk through the door?
Maybe it's me, but there doesn't seem to be any relevance whatsoever.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I've known people who worked in dollar stores, they watch every shopper that comes in the door and still have to constantly deal with theft; and that was in good neighborhoods.
But how much does robbery, shoplifting and employee theft contribute to the lack of traditional grocery stores in not-so-good neighbor hoods?
Id buy THAT for a dollar!
What is it with controlling people and their food?
People want a nice safe, clean employee cafeteria and the big gov says no.
People have the freedom to shop for food they can afford and big gov says no.
To protect a system that has more expensive food people can afford?
People have a sent income, let them find the food they can afford, enjoy and want to eat.
Freedom to buy products and services that are near them and at a price they can use everyday.
Should big gov tell a person how to shop, where to shop and that they have to support more expensive "grocery stores"?
Will the gov say what can be sold? What the lowest cost fresh produce, meats, fruit will be in a community?
Food shopping is now gov tracked, gov approved and with gov set prices for set food quality?
Who sets the price, food quality and what an approved grocery stores is?
Will the cost of all that gov approval be passed on with a new fresh produce, meats and fruit tax?
Let the free market set food prices, store locations and what to sell.
No gov regulation needed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Traditional retail is dead in the medium term.
These businesses are just capturing what the market wants or can carry. What has really failed, especially in inner cities are both economic and social policies. When it's better for tax reasons to have a single parent family, you're going to drive the poor to single families which long-term causes both economic and social instability of all sorts. When you give people thousands of dollars per month in overvalued coupons every month to buy 'food' (typically sponsored by or limited to Nestle, Kellogg's, Dole products etc) you're going to create a black market which corner shops and dollar stores are really good at fulfilling the demand for. When we were on food stamps a few years ago, the total value of the 'checks' was $2500/month but at the regular grocery stores, the products were about half the price of the value of the stamp.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Haven't you been paying attention?
Sixty years ago - when I was in high school - it seemed like fresh fruits and produce were plentiful and at very reasonable prices.
Things have changed, but Dollar Stores are NOT the cause.
The overwhelming change has resulted from the distribution of wealth.
The root of the problem is income inequality.
I also remember paying my way through college with part time jobs.
Today you need to live on ramen noodles and go $30,000 into debt.
The middle class ain't what it used to be.
Where did all that wealth end up?
Let me get this straight. Poor people, who have barely a few dollars to buy ANYTHING, are getting something to eat, or clean their clothes, or brush their teeth with what they can afford.
Rich people, and rich politicians are saying, IF ONLY THOSE LOSERS PAID MORE, they could get something better. We need to help them by driving out the one place they can get something. So, just starve a little bit, or smell a little bit, or just lose a few teeth and you can get some fruits and vegetables that we approve of and give us good feels.
Anyone posting here is fucking rich in comparison. Screw you and your enlightened benevolence. I've been there scraping up change to maybe get a pack of ramen noodles or something else to eat. These places are a godsend if you have nothing. Now you want to take it away because it makes you feel better about yourselves. Shame on you. May you lose everything and have to scrape together a few dimes and then you will WISH you had a 5 and dime, or dollar store in your area.
Fucking privileged assholes making up bullshit arguments to justify their self worth.
Shitty food is better than no food, assholes.
So...
Are they selling the same products as the big stores, but at a cheaper price?
Or are they selling something that big stores aren't selling?
Because, either way, simple business analysis tells you that you have a problem if that's the case and it's hardly "their" fault that they are undercutting you and giving people things they want.
I feel so sad for those multi-million dollar store chains that can't over-charge people for basic goods and services because of a dollar-store (or pound shop in my country) down the road.
Compete, or get the fuck out of the market. Trying to shut down the opposition that's filling the niches you aren't - without even trying to fill those same niches - is just being arseholes.
Be thankful that Hillary lost the election.
Safeway grocery stores here are expensive. I doubt they are making only 3 percent.
We go to WinCo
Dollar Tree often has good items. Certainly it would not be healthy to buy a lot of food at Dollar Tree, however; food is often expensive at Dollar Tree. One dollar for 4 ounces is $4 per pound.
Heaven forbid we address the mentality and lifestyles that drive people to those stores in the first place. This victim shit has reaalllyy passed its expiration date.
Sigh. This is so obviously the bigger stores hiring lobbyists and bribing the government to get rid of their competition. Poor people do not have a choice. They can only buy what they can afford and they (we) can afford almost nothing at all. For those who don't understand go try to live on $20 for a whole week. Just one $20 bill. Then see how often you shop at Whole Foods and notice what you do buy if you are there. Hint, it won't be the salmon or the Manchego cheese. Rich people who lecture poor people about how their diet isn't healthy should be lined up against a wall and shot. End of problem. Or just kill all the poor. I think many of these corporations would be in favor of that.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
...give $1 Million worth of tax breaks and incentives to a big box store.
On the other hand... Give $1 Million worth of tax breaks and incentives to ten smaller local stores.
Now that I think about it, that won't work. Because all the local cash will go to businesses with city hall connections that don't need it.
You know, the same ones that don't want the dollar stores in their area either.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
+1 I buy certain things at the dollar store or equivalent, and I never confuse it with the grocery store, or my local jewelry store
Special interests in cities do. The motivations are right there in TFS: Margins are razor thin for grocery stores. That's who's fighting.
Apparently, food is not coveted as much as the grocers assert. If food made money, there would be stores that sold food and no beer and cigarettes and sodas.
"Yes, we have no toilet paper today -- just food."
Poor people can't afford upscale food. Eliminating the Dollar Stores isn't going to raise their food budget.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I remember reading an article, back in the 90's I think, that the grocery store 1 to 3 percent profit was a lie. If you do you grocery shopping at Walmart as I do and go into a regular grocery store, you will be amazed at how much higher the regular grocery store prices are. That proved to me that the 1 to 3 percent profit was a lie. I am surprised that people actually do their grocery shopping at any of our local regular grocery stores. I am much too frugal to knowingly throw away money.
Yeah, this is just pure bs to save overpriced "grocery" stores that sell toothpaste and toilet paper for multiples of what it costs at a dollar store.
Nice try playing the"health" card guys, but you're not price competitive on many items.
9 years ago, my local grocery chain implemented "loyalty cards". I was always forgetting my card. But it used a Bar code, so I made a photocopy backup. One day my grocery store decided they would no longer accept photocopies. They sent me out, into a winter snowstorm, sick as a dog, I had stopped to buy cold medicine, into an unplowed parking lot, walking through 3+ inches of unplowed snow on the parking lot, with all 3 of my kids, the oldest had just started kindergarten a few months earlier, I was trying to get back in time to get him off to school on time, all for the original loyalty card from my glovebox.
That's the American grocery store experience for you right there.
I said FUCK THIS SHIT! Even with a loyalty card discount, Grocery store prices on a pack of chicken hot dogs was over $5. The same product at Walmart was under $2. So I started running the numbers on everything else. Everything was cheaper. How much grief do I want to suffer to pay over twice as much? And we're talking about the largest section of my budget! Beating out the Mortgage/Rent!
Now folks knock Walmart. This is cannibalizing our other businesses. And the grocery store chain, they donate to all these wonderful charities. They have a nursery room for kids to play in while their parents shop. All these wonderful extras.
On the other hand, by my calculations, by shopping at Walmart, I saved enough money to BUY A NEW CAR in a lot less than 9 years.
It's your money. Where do you want it to go?
As for Dollar Stores. Well driving to the grocery chain, that's how many miles? What's your gas mileage? How about insurance & maintenance? What's the IRS mileage rate these days? $0.545/mile? It doesn't take a lot of distance before the Dollar store becomes the better price. Don't both places sell foods like StarKist?
And it's not just Dollar Stores. Drug stores, corner shops, everybody sells basic foodstuffs.
This is the Grocery stores crying sour grapes because their extremely lucrative monopoly with enormous profit margins is going down the tubes. The Free Market Principle working as intended.
any other store. One, I pass in weekly travels, is 15 miles from anything that would have any "grocery" items. In that 15 miles, there must be 40-50 homes. It's a perfect location, so people don't have to travel 20-30 miles to get things they need. Maybe the "super stores" are overpriced?
The issue is that those highly profitable items are subsidizing loss leaders like fresh produce. You take away the miscellaneous loss leading profits and food becomes more expensive until the grocery store can no longer compete and disappears, leaving you with cheap toothpaste and shitty food supplies.
equating higher price with higher quality is also a fallacy. Some brands purposely charge more to create the impression of high quality. E.g. the entire perfume industry. The economics of quality goods are not so simple.
So change your business model. There, problem solved.
You are missing one key detail there, chief. Food deserts tend to occur in areas of high crime, which is different than poor. There are poor areas with low crime, and they have grocery stores. It turns out if treat others like shit, they don't open stores. weird.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Residents fear the stores deter other business, especially in neighborhoods without grocers or options for healthy food
...
they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business.
Make up your mind. They drive grocery stores away, or they're especially bad because they're in neighborhoods that don't have grocery stores anyway? You can't drive away something that's already not there even without you.
We have a local store called "Hy-Vee" For what I can buy at Hy-Vee for $100 in SNAP (Food Stamps), I can get from even a Walmart for $30. And I'm in Nebraska, and Agriculture state. Even the generic at a lot of local grocers is too expensive, and when you look at the amount of Food Stamps they rely on, it doesn't make sense not to shop at dollar stores or cheaper discount places. My wife and I are currently spending $815 on rent because our rent market gone up, and we only get $1000 on disability between the two of us for everything including meds, fuel, gas, electricity, water, etc.. And SNAP only gives us $65/mo for both of us. We can't work due to physical injuries we sustained while working on the Job (my job violated OSHA and got me injured and then screwed me in a giant legal battle), and we are already sucking air to make ends meet. We don't have options because event though food should be cheap here, companies are paying worse wages (down to $9.50/hr when you need $11/hr just to pay rent alone), causing people to have less to spend. Even Hy-Vee posts record profits. They aren't operating on razer-thin profits, they are screwing people over with cereal boxes that cost $6 for a simple box of Corn Flakes. That's insane. I say screw'em, if they charge that for food, even basics (Eggs here are $3/dozen in Omaha, NE) then they deserve to die out. Dollar stores and discount places are the only way my wife and I can eat. I'd get a job, but I'm missing most of the discs in my vertebrae in my back and those don't grow back. I also walk hunched over. No way can I go back into my degree area (IT) and I don't even qualify for minimum wage jobs (can't stand for more than 5 minutes, can't lift over 10lbs). So yeah, Dollar stores will rule when they cut wages and raise rates.
Apparently FB now wants to make it illegal to be an idiot.
Dollar stores pay less taxes than big grocery stores.
Cities want big grocery stores instead of dollar stores.
Hmmmmm..
That's where I got my first six string. Played it till my fingers bled :)
It's absolutely true. 'dollar' stores are always a sign that the neighborhood is either IN decline or has ALREADY declined.
There are a very few exceptions, like dropping a Dollar Tree into an upscale shopping center, but those are done to cater to the complaints that regular people can't afford to shop in such places. Yes they can, here's a fucking Dollar Tree for you! Happy now?
But usually, these stores come in and take over whatever cheap space they can. It's cheap because there is no demand, because the area won't support better stores of ANY kind.
Family Dollar built a brand-new store two blocks from my house. The lot had been a working furniture shop for decades. They cleared the land and dropped in a new building. What happened? Well it was certainly popular because it was convenient. But it was also burglarized immediately and then again and again and again, literally every few days. The brand-new store sported plywood over shattered windows for months at a time. And still does every time somebody breaks in. The police were powerless.
The store also brought a lot of trash. People don't care about using overflowing trash cans, which are overflowing because the store workers were too busy to keep up with it. But people are pigs and just throw everything anywhere. It wasn't just AT the store but trash dropped here and there along sidewalks in every direction, due to customers consuming stuff while they walked home.
Sig for hire.
Next to the dollar store near me there is a grocery store that only sells meat, fresh produce, and a couple of different specialty food items. Thats all they stock.
A lot of people nowadays actually have to buy stuff or get credit because of 1) health reason (you gotta pay that hospital) 2) transportation (you can't afford a city central flat, so you gotta rent way outside which cost money) as the main factors. "frivolous" credits while there being some are not the main cause.
Compete with who? The guy down the lane that has figured out a better business model? Charge more for the food you sell. If you are located conveniently, people will buy. If nothing works, maybe it is ok you go out of business. People need to eat, and therefore you generally have to do zero marketing for people to buy your product. Thatâ(TM)s one less worry than many companies.
Nope.
For the past two decades, everyone has watched distribution models change dramatically. Dry/canned goods and no meat/produce/dairy means that this portion of sales can be done differently. The dry goods makers want market expansion just like other businesses, so not having any loyalty to grocers, they help fund the dollar stores with credit and not-as-fresh stock that the grocers demand (long shelf life).
The grocers, wanting to become like Walmart (believing their shoppers want convenience, one-stop-shops, etc) become like Walmart, and put their strength in groceries behind, becoming behemoths like Sams, Costco, etc.
At the bottom of the food chain, mom&pops get crushed by low-volume buys, inconvenient distribution, lack of credit/purchasing strength (remember A&P?) and go bust. The dollar stores need cheap overhead, and move in.
Cities used to have C-stores, bodegas, delis, and lots of small operations, who suffer in the same ways as the mom&pops. Add in farmer's and "local-source" markets, rural co-op markets, and the common grocery model is all but dead. The BigStore and Amazon models have disrupted distribution infrastructure. Add in foreign foods, but then tariffs, NAFTA-reorganizations, and the dust hasn't settled yet. Urban delivery models don't work in the burbs or in rural locales.
It's a massive re-org, and this is just one symptom that things are changing, and you haven't seen the finish of it; it may continue to evolve for decades and decades.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If so-called 'big box supermarkets' are being threatened and undercut by 'dollar stores' on enough items to make them unprofitable when in the same neighborhood, then maybe the big-box supermarket chains should buy out the dollar stores, run them side-by-side, and not carry duplicate items of the dollar store in the big-box supermarket down the street. After all aren't they really two different sets of customers?
It would be far from the first time some corporation had at least two different 'brands' they owned.
Additionally, how many people do you really think do all of their regular shopping at only one grocery store? There are at least three I use: a 'discount' supermarket for the most common food items and things like bathroom-related items, an 'upscale' market for meat and produce (higher quality), and a specialty market for the one or two things I can't get at the other two and can't live without. Occasionally I'll go to some 'dollar store' for one or two things I know they'll have in abundance that'll be a fraction of the cost at any of the others. I suspect that if some family is in the 'working poor' category they'd use a version of the above combination but shifted down a notch to include the dollar-store category. It would make sense for a national discount market to buy up a dollar store chain and run them side-by-side.
Of course there are potential 'monopoly' concerns to consider with an approach like this; would it further limit competition, resulting in giving in to the temptation to raise prices across the board, knowing people have no choice anymore?
Remember, these are the same cocksuckers who fought tooth and nail (and failed) to prevent National Guard and Reserve personnel from getting full Commissary access instead of 12 visits per year. Fuck, if I remember right, they fought the increase from 12 to 24 visits even.
I have no sympathy for these fuckers.
This space unintentionally left blank.
The result of decades of spiraling down.
What did people expect when they just let corporation run roughshod of people and not pay reasonable taxes?
What did people think the inevitable result in destroying unions would be?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So Jeff Bezos's official propaganda outlet, his own Washington Post, has an article demonizing dollar stores. Dollar stores could take sales away from Amazon therefore they are BAD.
Today's Americans are lazier than several decades ago. Farm mechanization has taken on more crops, including potatoes, grapes, peanuts, tomatoes, and more. Still, most vegetables have resisted mechanization. Industrial agriculture produces food for Americans at low prices, and pays Americans wages needed to induce them to work on the farm.
It echoes an AC post, but I live in Tucson, and in the neighborhoods where you find dollar stores, you will almost certainly have a "carniceria" nearby for cheap perishables. Market forces already settle this. Plus, wanting to feed a large family efficiently with bulk goods, and wanting to purchase unprocessed healthier foods are not really disjoint pursuits.
Today's Americans are lazier than several decades ago. Americans would rather live in a tiny apartment in a city, working at an air conditioned McDonalds, with internet, friends, and nightclubs within twenty miles, instead of at a dairy farm a few hundred miles away from a real city. That's why they chase illegal aliens.
In contrast, the unhealthy crap can be produced from crops, which can be mechanized. Most vegetables are labor intensive. The modern tomato, and harvesting machine, took a lot of r&d. There will only be a limited number of vegetables worth mechanizing. Use Genetic engineering to produce healthier tomatoes?
You actually think you're Christian, huh?
Ah, the solution without definition.
because lack of imagination. same as nazis, there are super few, but still you see them as all the bad guys in all the movies. Lack of imagination.
Dollar stores are the canary for the rise of brown skin neighborhoods.
When middle-class neighborhoods age, they become more affordable for lower class people. That, in turn, increases the decline until everyone who could support the quality neighborhood grocer has left.
Brown and black move in and the only stores willing to put up with the higher crime and theft rates are Dollar stores.
Why do you think the stores getting looted during the recent hurricanes were Family Dollar (aka Fambily Dolla)?
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back..."
Robert A. Heinlein
"The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert A. Heinlein, G. P. Putnam Inc., (p. 25), 1967.
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/410042
I remember reading on Yahoo Finance a few years back about how "dollar" stores had become way more successful since they started accepting food stamps. Rather than forcing them out, just make the rules for stores accepting food stamps stricter and they'll disappear on their own.
Exactly, those cheap bastards should join the full time military if they want tax paper subsidized stores. Damn reservists. Next thing, the Coast Guard will want to be treated like a real military branch and cops will be pretending they aren't civilians too.
Dollar stores rarely sell fresh produce or meats, but they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business...
So Safeway, Acme, Wegmans, Kroger, etc can't compete with the dollar store? Of course they can, they choose not to.
I've noticed Aldi opening grocery stores in lower-income areas, reduced selections, lots of house brand over name brand goods, and fresh friuit and vegetables - all at lower prices. Back in the day we called them 'grocery stores', as opposed to 'supermarkets' that carry every blessed food item imaginable.
The reality is that if the vast majority of low income families really wanted the fresh fruits and vegetables these people claim, why doesn't someone take out an SBA loan and open up a produce stand? The rent is low, wages are low, and apparently the demand is great - according to people that live outside the community and shop at Whole Foods.
Ken
A fair point, but at the point you change your model, you have become a dollar store. And they’ve been doing it for longer than you have.
The fundamental problem is “food deserts” isn’t that fresh food is especially hard to get, or overpriced compared to what you would pay elsewhere. It’s that the cultural knowledge of “how to cook” has been lost. Beans and rice is a pretty boring diet, but it is a staple of poor cultures all over the world for a reason: the ingredients are cheap and provide almost complete nutrition by themselves. But when you don’t cook, and your parent didn’t cook, and the same is true of all your friends, that processed junk is a lot quicker, and probably tastes better, and sure does keep a long time.
Cities get their money from...taxes.
Dollar stores charge low prices, reducing tax income for cities.
Pricier stores don't like competition, so they remind politicians of the tax implications, sometimes reinforced with kickbacks.
Of course cities don't like dollar stores! They actually help poorer people more than they help city governments!
That's the free market for you. As so many Americans on this site are fond of pointing out, if you touch that at all then it's communism. Like, it's literally the USSR.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Strange you should say that. Big Ag has a many foreign nationals working the fields for below-American wages. Look at what fruit pickers are paid in the US. It's a pittance.
If a business is in an area and able to make enough profit to stay open, then it is being used by people within driving distance and will stay open and keep selling the same things.
If another business is in an area and struggling, then it is not being used by enough people to be profitable, and it has to sell other things or close.
This shows that regardless of what You think of the business, if its open then people are shopping there and if it closes then there was not enough business.
There is absolutely nothing else going on but the above, and its patently simple to understand. The name of the business or what it sells changes nothing.
Emphasis mine.
Sorry, but I'm not going to put a whole lot of confidence in anything stated by anyone who buys dollar store batteries by choice, because, as it so happens, I have purchased dollar store batteries.
The charts linked below are consistent with my empirical observations. Never buy batteries at the dollar store.
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No. If the "residents" feared the Dollar Stores taking over, the Dollar Stores would not have customers. What we most likely have is local merchants who can't compete making a lot of noise and looking for a little crony capitalism to help them out.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Big box and brand name stores close down in low income neighborhoods because the store is expensive to operate and needs to sell large turnover of goods to be profitable let alone make a decent margin.
Throw in high crime, vandalism and other problems which come with large number of lower educated single parent households, unsupervised teenagers and name retailers close up and move elsewhere.
Dollar stores and third tier retailers take over with lower operating costs lower needed profit margins, .....
Kroger, the USA largest grocer, needs to sell $30 million dollars per store annually. Low income areas even at 40% of take home pay couldn't buy that much product from a single Kroger store.
Do I really need to give you examples? Don't you intuitively know this about the world you live in?
If I went out and bought a car on my amex card I could put the purchase on installment at a better rate than most low income people can get an actual loan, it would take less time and effort too.
If I lose my job unemployment and food stamps would actually cover all my expenses because I live cheap. If a poor person was on unemployment they'd have to pull out of an emergency fund. An emergency fund that is probably in a bank account.
My emergency fund has high interest savings requiring a 10k initial deposit (even though there's less than 10k in it now) , stocks, ETFs. I can pull out cash and liquidate assets that aren't likely to perform any time soon.
I get between 1.5 and 5% back on everything I buy. Poor people reward cards pay like 1%. Plus I'm able to pay off the balance every month so I never eat interest.
If I get a hospital bill I can just pay it. Poor people have to put it on an installment plan, there is usually at least a one time fee and it shows an active installment loan until it's paid off. Lowering their credit.
When I think my stuff is outdated I'm going to wait until camelcamelcamel tells me something I want is selling unusually low and I'll just buy it cash. Poor people have to wait until things need to be replaced and then end up paying more. By the time normal prices matched what I paid for my 1080tv there were 4k tvs on the shelves in target.
If a poor person even tries to invest outside of their 401k on a scale that suits them it's an uphill battle compared to a guy with money. If 500 is your discretionary budget for a month and you do great and turn it into 1000 in a year and cash out. Well get ready to pay $50 because you're buying the plus version of turbotax this year buddy!
In my area there are some small stores that sell pretty much nothing but fresh fruit and vegetables. And some larger stores that include packaged (jar, can, frozen, refrigerated) foods and bread in addition. They don't sell toothpaste or household goods or electronics. Yet they seem to be doing OK.