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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."
Did your analysis include historical "grocery store location", and compare the number of grocery stores over the last decade vs the number of dollar stores last decade?. Oh yeah, it didn't.
McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive. A "free country" where the "free market" has decided it has to be cheaper for a person to drive several miles to a mcdonald's every day and get their food is cheaper than having stuff in the pantry and cooking at home.
Are you sure there are no "government subsidies" somewhere, skewing your "free market" theories? Because I'm all for free market, but the USA doesn't play fair with free trade. They offer you a "free trade agreement" with zero tariffs for your country. Except after the tariffs they have another layer of regulations that keep your product from being sold in the USA. For example, Argentina has been trying to sell lemons in the US. We can produce them cheaply. But we have quotas on how many we can sell and they need to be a certain size and color... I thought it was a free market and the market would solve it? Why so many regulations? Try selling corn to the USA and let me know how it goes. Ah yes, We have to subsidize these farmers, or they'll lose their jobs.
McD is no longer cheap.
$8 is not my definition of a cheap meal.
I can get a whole frozen pizza for about $5.
I can also get a buffet for $8.50.
Cities are overpriced because they have to pay for expensive land as well as higher salaries. As a restaurant owner, would you rather pay for a $500,000 building on a $20,000 lot with 50 staff at $8/hr or a $750,000 building on a $1,500,000 lot, with 75 staff at $12/hour? The salary difference exceeds $1 million per year. 50 staff is about what it takes to run 3 shifts at a fast food restaurant and open from 6am-11pm. I've ran one in the distant past.
There are no barriers to better budgeting.
You need to read Boots theory of socio-economic unfairness to understand why I think you are mistaken in your point of view.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
>"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."
The economy is more complicated than that. If you cut all exports, there will be oversupply and prices will drop greatly. This is true. But THEN the free market will react and many agricultural businesses will not be able to survive on those lower prices. They will do a combination of shutting down production, raising prices, laying off workers, lowering quality, seek cheap replacement imports, etc... or go out of business. If you subsidize production more, then taxes go up and people have less money and their purchasing power goes down, which is similar to higher prices.
Apparently communities and groups of individuals have zero rights according to you. Just the single individual.
So the communities of people who fight for municipal broadband are all wrong. Because it comes between the right for an individual to choose Comcast. (Because that's his only choice.)
I'm libertarian myself and these 3rd grade libertarian fantasies regularly spouted embarass the fuck out of me.
Your are mixing a discussion about 'rights' with market principles, hence your confusion. If you are open to allowing market principles, communities are free to get together and decide not to buy from dollar stores which in the end results in their shutdown or lack of desire to expand in those communities. If enough individuals still shop there, the market will know. However, using legislation to determine who can sell in a community would not be market driven result.
As to who has 'rights', that is defined constitutionally, and communities do have the 'right' to create such legislation, even if it does not follow market principles.
Should communities have the 'right' to limit shopping choices for individuals in the community, some or many of who may want to shop at dollar stores?
Striking the right balance between both can be a challenge, different people will have different opinions on to where that balance line should be.