Dollar Stores may be harmful

[roadman65]

According to this article Dollar Stores are bad for the poor:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/dollar-stores-are-everywhere-thats-a-problem-for-poor-americans/ar-AAEzZ2F?ocid=spartandhp

[hotdogPi]

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

[roadman65]

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

Tell it to the author of the article.  I think he is trying to relay is the discount price type of store.

In some areas of Florida, Dollar Tree can't sell frozen food if they are in the same plaza as a supermarket.  If you see Pubix and Dollar Tree together, do not count on $1 Burritos or Hot Pockets for sale.

[kalvado]

American capitalism at its best.
"We cannot compete" instantly becomes "our competitor is pure evil!!!1111"

[vdeane]

In ecosystems, having too much of one species is harmful because it crowds everyone else out and leads to less biodiversity.  The same is true in capitalism, and as noted, it's causing some things like fresh fruits and vegetables to become unavailable in some areas.

[kalvado]

In ecosystems, having too much of one species is harmful because it crowds everyone else out and leads to less biodiversity.  The same is true in capitalism, and as noted, it's causing some things like fresh fruits and vegetables to become unavailable in some areas.

So we have more traditional stores, which do have a competitive advantage of offering a better type of goods (fresh produce) but still cannot compete.
I wonder why that is?...

[SP Cook]

This is yet another variation on the "food desert' theme that has been flowing through the far left for about a decade.  Faced with the reality that people on food stamps are six times more likely to be morbidly obese than 10 pounds underweight, the far lefts would have to reexamine their basic beliefs, or come up with some idiotic theory to explain this fact.  As usual, they chose the later.  Food stampers are somehow trapped in unseen communities where the "healthy food" they want is somehow unavailable.  Of course, the reverse is true.  People that make ignorant economic decisions and end up on food stamps, and people that are just so fundamentally lazy that they refuse to work in a society that has a labor shortage and end up on food stamps, are exactly the same people that make bad food decisions.  It is part of their defective personality makeup.

Trust me, if there was a market for "healthy food" in those places, someone would fill the need.

[hbelkins]

Consider the source. MSN and CNN. Hardly bastions of support for capitalism.

But beyond the ideological bias, the story misses a lot of economic realities.

Dollar General is an iconic brand in this area. It originally started out in Scottsville, Ky., but the headquarters moved about an hour south to Nashville a few years ago, no doubt because of Tennessee's more business-friendly tax structure.  Most county seats of rural counties in Kentucky have had Dollar General stores for decades.

I live in a rural county of 7,000 people, and the county seat's population is 1,000. We've had a Dollar General for as long as I can remember. There's been a Family Dollar here for years as well. Just last year, a second Dollar General opened in town (the old one had moved to a location two miles south of town eons ago). We do not have a Walmart. The town where I work has a smaller Walmart, not a supercenter, that opened in the mid-1980s. The nearest supercenters are an hour away.

I, for one, am grateful for the presence of the dollar stores in my town. They don't have the selection of a Walmart, not even the small non-supercenter, and the prices are a little higher. But they have some things I need at decent prices, and their digital coupon program is excellent.

One thing that Dollar General is doing is opening stores in rural areas that are in established communities or near traffic generators, such as industrial parks, schools, or major intersections. If you need toilet paper or dog food, it can save you a 15-mile trip into town.

These stores also create jobs, increase the property tax base, and generate additional revenue for utilities and their accompanying fees/taxes. They can also allow people with limited incomes to spend less money than they ordinarily would on essentials, thus providing economic benefits and savings to individuals. There's no negative to their presence.

The story indicates that some Dollar Generals are starting to carry fresh produce. The whole "food desert" thing doesn't fly in most county seat towns. We have two full-service grocery stores (an IGA and a Save-A-Lot) and the town where I work has the same, plus a convenience store with a meat and produce section.

[In_Correct]

I can see the harm in a store that is the size of a corner convenience store (in some cases travel center) but restricts access to restrooms.

[hbelkins]

I can see the harm in a store that is the size of a corner convenience store (in some cases travel center) but restricts access to restrooms.

Every new Dollar General I've seen has restrooms, but you have to ask for a key.

[wxfree]

Around here, Dollar General and Family Dollar prices are a little higher for many items, particularly food items, than at Walmart or H-E-B.  I go to the dollar stores when the price of what I want is the same or lower, or when I'm willing to spend a little more to save a few minutes by not going to a bigger store, or when I just need a few items and prefer to walk, since I live closer to those two stores.  Those stores aren't out-competing the larger stores, unless you consider the smaller parking lot and store, which saves distance.  I don't mind walking the distance, but it takes time to do so and sometimes I prefer to save the time.  The two larger stores I mentioned are basically discount retailers with a better selection and, at least in my experience, slightly lower prices overall.

I don't have any experience shopping in more urban areas or shopping with physical limitations (either disability or lack of access to transportation), so I don't have any insight into whether food deserts are a real thing, but I suspect that if they are, they're more of a symptom than a cause.  As mentioned earlier, if there were a demand for healthier items, the retailers would be selling them.  People on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale tend to have less healthy habits.  I suspect that this is both cause and effect.  If they had better life habits, they may be less likely to be so far down on the scale.  Also, speaking from my experience with depression, if life is always challenging, why try to make it last longer?

[kalvado]

I don't want to go into chicken-or-egg style discussion about bad food habits and lifestyle - but there are quite a few cases of scurvy, of all things, which one may call an extreme case of the bad food situation. It is quite interesting to read what landed people into that extreme.
For example: several cases of scurvy in autistic kids in Boston are attributed to their insistence of minimal variations in life; including same day-to-day menu; lots of junk food - candy and chips - and here we go.
Another case - people with diabetes, where all but one patient actually bought vegetables - but overcooked to the point when vitamins were gone.

And I am not sure fresh stuff is that vitally important in the world where polyvitamin pill can take care of many issues for as little as 5-7 cents a day..

[formulanone]

Trust me, if there was a market for "healthy food" in those places, someone would fill the need.

As mentioned earlier, if there were a demand for healthier items, the retailers would be selling them.

I'm not entirely convinced "the market will decide" in the manner of which you speak of. The supermarket, yes...but the smaller-footprint locations don't want to take a financial loss on grocery items, except in small quantities. And that's also true in an airport shoppe or the tidiest of mini-marts; it's usually a tiny basket or shelf, if at all.

The problem is that the "fresh food grocer" of yesteryear has long disappeared from most towns and cities, which was replaced by the local Farmer's Market model. The clientele are usually a little more middle-class, and tends to deal with cash-only purchases in about roughly half my experiences. They're usually selling items in larger quantities, rather than just one-or-two of a fruit/vegetable. I don't actually know if they might take WIC (for those who unaware, it hasn't been a "stamp" or a book of tickets for decades), since it's an electronic form of tender which I've not handled except when I was a cashier in a grocery store over 25 years ago.

The local grocer transformed into the larger grocery store over the years because you could offer more variety, and then the supermarket, and finally the department store model. The availability pushed aside the locals in lots of places...no need to waste anymore pixels on that discussion. But if the locals were going to compete, they were probably going to pare out the items which were less profitable (produce doesn't have much of a high gross unless there's tremendous quantity) and prone to spoilage (more waste from transit, consumers' visual preferences, much shorter shelf-life compared to dry goods). The latter also causes the problems of requiring more maintenance and upkeep with cleanliness and rotation, necessitating more labor.

Thus, produce is a bit of a loss-leader for those stores. For the larger grocery stores, they can afford the loss to buttress it. They're going to cater to the ones who prepare their own food when they'd like to. But I'm not letting poor judgement off the hook either...from my years working in the grocery store, one can save a lot of money by buying fresh foods and produce rather than prepared foods and frozen meals (although, some frozen/canned vegetables are comparable in prices and can be stored for longer periods).

It's a bit of a viscous cycle; supermarkets in poorer areas charge more because there's more shrink (theft), an older building is more maintenance-prone, insurance increases, and there's less profit to be made from the customer base in pure economics. The store which offers less then marks up the prices to take advantage of a government program, because it's seen as "funny money".

[hotdogPi]

viscous cycle

If the cash is flowing slowly, it's definitely not the free market doing its work.

[wxfree]

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

Tell it to the author of the article.  I think he is trying to relay is the discount price type of store.

In some areas of Florida, Dollar Tree can't sell frozen food if they are in the same plaza as a supermarket.  If you see Pubix and Dollar Tree together, do not count on $1 Burritos or Hot Pockets for sale.

Are you sure Pubix is a supermarket?  It sounds like a different type of establishment.

[LM117]

I can see the harm in a store that is the size of a corner convenience store (in some cases travel center) but restricts access to restrooms.

Every new Dollar General I've seen has restrooms, but you have to ask for a key.

Unless it's a Dollar General Market, in which case you just walk in.

[Brian556]

I noticed that the parking lot of the Family Dollar on the east side of OKC was complexly trashed out. That right there should tell you something about their clientele.

[roadman65]

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

Tell it to the author of the article.  I think he is trying to relay is the discount price type of store.

In some areas of Florida, Dollar Tree can't sell frozen food if they are in the same plaza as a supermarket.  If you see Pubix and Dollar Tree together, do not count on $1 Burritos or Hot Pockets for sale.

Are you sure Pubix is a supermarket?  It sounds like a different type of establishment.

Yes Pulbix is a supermarket not only in Florida but parts of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but their main territory is Florida.

[hotdogPi]

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

Tell it to the author of the article.  I think he is trying to relay is the discount price type of store.

In some areas of Florida, Dollar Tree can't sell frozen food if they are in the same plaza as a supermarket.  If you see Pubix and Dollar Tree together, do not count on $1 Burritos or Hot Pockets for sale.

Are you sure Pubix is a supermarket?  It sounds like a different type of establishment.

Yes Pulbix is a supermarket not only in Florida but parts of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but their main territory is Florida.

whoosh

[CtrlAltDel]

This is yet another variation on the "food desert' theme that has been flowing through the far left for about a decade.  Faced with the reality that people on food stamps are six times more likely to be morbidly obese than 10 pounds underweight, the far lefts would have to reexamine their basic beliefs, or come up with some idiotic theory to explain this fact.  As usual, they chose the later.  Food stampers are somehow trapped in unseen communities where the "healthy food" they want is somehow unavailable.  Of course, the reverse is true.  People that make ignorant economic decisions and end up on food stamps, and people that are just so fundamentally lazy that they refuse to work in a society that has a labor shortage and end up on food stamps, are exactly the same people that make bad food decisions.  It is part of their defective personality makeup.

I know that you strenuously maintain that you aren't racist, but in posts like this one, it doesn't really come through.

[hotdogPi]

Some people working full time still aren't making enough money to stop being poor. (It's officially 2.4% year-round, but that doesn't count those not working over the summer, and there are a bunch that are close to the poverty line but slightly above it.)

[hbelkins]

This is yet another variation on the "food desert' theme that has been flowing through the far left for about a decade.  Faced with the reality that people on food stamps are six times more likely to be morbidly obese than 10 pounds underweight, the far lefts would have to reexamine their basic beliefs, or come up with some idiotic theory to explain this fact.  As usual, they chose the later.  Food stampers are somehow trapped in unseen communities where the "healthy food" they want is somehow unavailable.  Of course, the reverse is true.  People that make ignorant economic decisions and end up on food stamps, and people that are just so fundamentally lazy that they refuse to work in a society that has a labor shortage and end up on food stamps, are exactly the same people that make bad food decisions.  It is part of their defective personality makeup.

I know that you strenuously maintain that you aren't racist, but in posts like this one, it doesn't really come through.

When he posted this, I didn't see black people in urban areas. I pictured white folks in Appalachia. Because I see this every day.

[SP Cook]

I know that you strenuously maintain that you aren't racist, but in posts like this one, it doesn't really come through.

Since I never mentioned race at all, your post is uninformed and uneducated.  You reveal your own racism in your incorrect and demeaning idea that "poor" is somehow synonymous with some particular race.  You should study up on the subject, including reading HB's wise post just above this one, before posting again.  And you should stop seeing issues in racial terms which simply are not there.

[hotdogPi]

This is yet another variation on the "food desert' theme that has been flowing through the far left for about a decade.  Faced with the reality that people on food stamps are six times more likely to be morbidly obese than 10 pounds underweight, the far lefts would have to reexamine their basic beliefs, or come up with some idiotic theory to explain this fact.  As usual, they chose the later.  Food stampers are somehow trapped in unseen communities where the "healthy food" they want is somehow unavailable.  Of course, the reverse is true.  People that make ignorant economic decisions and end up on food stamps, and people that are just so fundamentally lazy that they refuse to work in a society that has a labor shortage and end up on food stamps, are exactly the same people that make bad food decisions.  It is part of their defective personality makeup.

I know that you strenuously maintain that you aren't racist, but in posts like this one, it doesn't really come through.

When he posted this, I didn't see black people in urban areas. I pictured white folks in Appalachia. Because I see this every day.

I was imagining West Virginia (as SP Cook lives there), which is overwhelmingly white, but it could just as easily apply to the majority African-American areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.



EDIT:

By the way, the grocery store I work at has bananas at 49¢ per pound, which is about 18-25¢ per banana. This is the cheapest item in the store, excluding the occasional clearance item. It only seems to apply to bananas (and plantains, which are 25¢ independent of weight); even other standard* fruits like apples cost a lot more.

*I originally typed "basic", but I didn't want to imply that they were alkaline.

[CtrlAltDel]

I know that you strenuously maintain that you aren't racist, but in posts like this one, it doesn't really come through.

Since I never mentioned race at all,

You didn't have to.

You're a smart guy, most often the smartest in the room. But if I had to guess, the rooms you frequent are filled with idiots, and as a result, you seem blind to the idea that not everyone is so easy to fool.