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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."
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.
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.
Yah! If the people want to choose unhealthy shit, then they have also chosen increased health costs. Of course, those costs don't show up until later years, and then they have the rest of us to pay for them. MAGA.
I can understand the sentiment a little bit. The one thing missing from the article's analysis is that when people "size up" a neighborhood, they look for certain visual cues. One of them is the type of retail present. When you drive through a neighborhood and see a dollar store, you classify that neighborhood as "poor". You dismiss it. And while that is most likely a realistic indicator, it harms the neighborhood's chance of becoming less poor, because it's like a scarlet letter on its chest.
However, I would also point out that many of the people opposing dollar stores are the same people who reminisce about going to the "five and dime" when they were younger.
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"
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
That's only vaguely true if you've been conned into believing that what the grocery store has is ripe, fresh food. Leafy greens aside, that isn't the case. Produce has to be picked under-ripe to even be shipped successfully, as supermarkets do it anyway. It's often gassed to force ripening (depending on product) and much of it lies around in cold storage for long periods before hitting store shelves. Most of this is a side effect of consumers demanding the same produce be on shelves all year, although some of it results from sourcing produce internationally.
Then, as a sibling comment points out, there's the issue of toxic can liners. Cans are lined with either plastic or epoxy. Plastic liners are more resistant to breaking when cans are dented, but more likely to leach toxics into their contents. And the likelihood increases if the food involved is acidic, which it often is - even if it isn't naturally so like tomatoes, it's often made so in order to further increase shelf life.
However, much of what they sell isn't canned at all, but it is preserved. And preserved foods are typically pounded full of sugar in order to extend their shelf life. The proliferation of HFCS isn't all involved in its use as a sweetener; processed food manufacturers use it to replace vegetable oil! It has a similar effect on food texture, but doesn't go rancid like oils do. They then cram it full of citric acid in order to cancel out the sweetness. Citric acid has health benefits in small quantities, but in large ones it threatens gut biota, both challenging digestion and also potentially contributing to a host of problems associated with poor digestive system function.
There's plenty to object to in the limited selection of foodstuffs supplied by Dollar general and their ilk. If they successfully displace real markets, they can do real harm. And we're only talking about the food so far, and not the cheap plastic disposable bullshit that they sell, which only increases landfilling since it's such garbage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Probably everyone has experienced cheaply made goods not lasting as long as more expensive goods, but the ratio in durability is less than the ratio in price. You can find cheap jeans for $10 to $20 at a big-box, low-end store. They will seldom last as long as $220 (or much more) jeans from a high-end store, but they will last a lot more than 1/11th as long at 1/11th the price. That is why the Sam Vimes argument is bunkum.
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.
Spoken like a man who never had problems affording or purchasing a good pair of boots.
If you can't grasp a metaphor, maybe an anecdote (or two) will help?
I'm a kinda guy who destroys footwear. High instep plus an old ankle injury... I have a funny step.
I've worn out three pairs of army boots during less than a year of service - and I was in personnel.
And you can bet your ass I was maintaining those boots, being a lowly conscript surrounded by officers and NCOs all day.
Important caveat - I'm a Bosnian. But rules of the market still apply.
Anyway... for years I would buy a pair of boots around November... wear them until the spring... then start wearing them in September-October while looking for a new pair.
Tried out civilian versions of army boots (no worse or better than the actual thing issued to recruits), various hiking shoes/boots, supposedly fancier (2-3 times the price of the army kind) boots... all the same crap.
One pair of hiking shoes literally fell apart as I was cleaning them for the next season - soles fell off.
Granted... none of those boots were ever more than maybe $75 (the fancy kind). But they were all crap, regardless of price.
Now... I could maybe shell out much more than that for a fancy pair of hiking boots... those look robust...
But who's to say those won't fall apart in a year? They are sold in the same boutique.
Then... I discovered work boots. Not "work boots" sold at boutiques - the real deal. Steel toecaps, heavy, hard and ugly.
And actually cheaper than most boots cause they tend to be "ugly" and a single boot will weigh as much as a pair of fancy boots. A decent pair would be $20-30.
Then I found the REALLY good ones.
Italian manufacturer, high shaft, laces and zippers, all the regular trimmings, ten-year warranty...
Sure... at around $60 a bit pricier, for that kind of footwear, but still cheaper than what I used to pay shopping for "civilian" boots.
And I even got to test that warranty - cause thanks to my "magic feet" the leather started tearing.
Yes, you can technically use that quick-access zipper to put them on quickly... but that may not be such a great idea.
But hey... they were under warranty, so I replaced them, wore those for 3 seasons... and as they were starting to show quite a bit of wear and tear (still not leaking though) - I went to the same shop to buy another pair.
They are no more.
Thing is, those were some REALLY good boots.
So good in fact that the manufacturer stopped making them. Thought of ordering some directly from the manufacturer - they don't make them anymore.
You want all those features (it's the quick-release zipper) on a pair of work boots? Competition sells that for twice as much and in a wider color range.
Clearly, not because it costs twice as much to make them or cause the manufacturer would be losing money.
It's cause that's what "the market will bear" and the manufacturer would be losing "potential earnings".
And to add insult to injury, I'm clearly so far out of "the market" that even should those other boots (with the same features) be worth the price, I'd have to take a 5-hour ride just to try them on.
Ended up buying a pair of "similar but clearly not the same quality" Romanian-made boots for around $50.
Similarly... We went shopping for a freezer a few months back.
After digging around online, driving around local malls and shops, checking and comparing features, sizes, quality, price...
Turns out you can either buy cheap crap, cheap crap that is too big, cheap crap which spends twice as much electricity as it should in that price-feature range - or you can buy large freezer-fridge combos, which are more expensive and for which we don't have room. And they might be crap too... didn't check.
Buuuuut... if I check the manufacturer's website - they DO produce and sell better freezers.
More isolation, use less electricity...
They just don't sell them here.
Cause they sell for about $60 more.
Market won't bear such a high
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens