Posted on 12/29/2018 6:41:14 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
It has become an increasingly common story: A dollar store opens up in an economically depressed area with scarce healthy and affordable food options, sometimes with the help of local tax incentives. It advertises hard-to-beat low prices but it offers little in terms of fresh produce and nutritious items—further trapping residents in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.
A recent research brief by the Institute of Local Self Reliance (ILSR), a nonprofit supporting local economies, sheds light on the massive growth of this budget enterprise. Since 2001, outlets of Dollar General and Dollar Tree (which bought Family Dollar in 2015) have grown from 20,000 to 30,000 in number. Though these “small-box” retailers carry only a limited stock of prepared foods, they’re now feeding more people than grocery chains like Whole Foods, which has around 400-plus outlets in the country.
In fact, the number of dollar-store outlets nationwide exceeds that of Walmart and McDonalds put together — and they’re still growing at a breakneck pace. That, ILSR says, is bad news.
“While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress,” the authors of the brief write. “They’re a cause of it.”
Dollar stores have succeeded in part by capitalizing on a series of powerful economic and social forces — white flight, the recent recession, the so-called “retail apocalypse” — all of which have opened up gaping holes in food access. But while dollar store might not be causing these inequalities per se, they appear to be perpetuating them. The savings they claim to offer shoppers in the communities they move to makes them, in some ways, a little poorer.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
What a total crook … there is a Dollar Store one mile from the house. It is where Mrs Clamper buys pet food at a substantial discount … the exact food brand and type that Bashas sells at its store about 2 miles away. Paper products
and several other useful items are also much cheaper than regular store prices. Also the checkout line is fast. We are FAR from being “poor” and there are few minorities in this area.
Thx, bro.
kinda like whole foods.
The “99 cents only” chain actually does sell produce like bananas and apples. The fresh inventory is similar to what you’d find at 7-11 but in larger quantities.
“There is such a thing as cheap but lasts. My cheapo on sale Walmart jeans have lasted 10+ years but my cheapo on sale Payless flip flops only last about 6-8 years. Yes, year round regular wear.”
My wife and I were born while the Great Depression was still going on. Then, came WWII with rationing and lot of shortages re consumer goods. With that background, we don’t waste money on fashion nor fads.
My wife enjoys wearing Talbot Clothes, more on that later.
She and her best friends/relatives of the same age often buy so called everyday clothes at Costco or Walmart and Amazon prime. They joke that if these clothes wear out in a year, they got a good deal.
However, most of those items in spite of being worn a lot and washed a lot don’t wear out for years. They end up at Good Will while still in good shape.
Re the Talbot’s. My wife loves their great looking and timeless fashion clothes. She was asked to be a model in their former downtown clothes. That store closed and we now have one in a local outlet/discount mall.
So, we go to that outlet store after Christmas, and she buys a lot not high end clothes but nice to wear to lunch and meeting clothes. I pick up that tab.
Our adult kids give her Talbot gift cards for Mother’s Day and her birthday. She orders online for the clothes paid by those gift cards and mine. These clothes are their regular high end clothes often at great prices. Those clothes become her church clothes and special lunch clothes with her friends.
yep
You pretty much summed it up! Very well done.
One thing that has changed drastically since I grew up was that working class neighborhoods used to be full of kids hanging around outside. Some of them looking for trouble but mostly kids playing stickball, street hockey, or just riding around on their bicycles. Now those streets are totally empty. Even on perfect summer days.
Almost all children these days are cocooned inside playing Nintendo games or binge-watching something on the TV. Many of them getting fat and out of shape in the process. There are some real gaming addicts that I personally know in my family. Morning to night it is almost 100% spent in front of a game banging away on those joysticks. One reason I never allowed them into my home. I consider video games as bad as crack cocaine.
You’da thunk Obammy would have organized Berlin Airlift-like efforts to address the situation.
Have you ever read "A Man In Full" by Thomas Wolfe? Part of that book deals with the life of a young man caught in a downward spiral. The poorer he gets, the more he gets crushed by the bureaucracy and all the BS that comes with being poor. I think this is probably Wolfe's finest book.
Bezos owns Whole Foods. Time to open up a Whole Foods on every corner just like 7-11 and Starbucks.
You sound like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok sniffing their noses at smelly Walmart shoppers.
You’d probably get along well with the Deep State crowd. You have the same contempt for people you consider to be beneath you.
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Gee. You sure think you know me from a random comment about the number of crappy dollar stores in my neighborhood.
I just don’t like buying cheap Chinese shit, and I’d rather buy my food from a food store. Yeah... terrible, huh?
And those people who aren’t like you are so... yucky.
You’re just being a jerk.
Conversation over.
They are sort of doing what Walmart did a half-century ago. They are opening stores in small towns that could not otherwise support a superstore.
In the 1960s and 70s Walmart was opening store in small rural towns of around 2,000+ population. Their stores with typically larger than local stores, but they combined hardware and housewares with clothing. Their foods were boxed/canned.
A couple of years ago, Walmart opened some small stores in some 2,000 population towns. They closed them about about 5 years because the stores did not generate enough income to satisfy corporate.
Just for giggles, I just went to LL Bean’s website. Except for 318 items, EVERYTHING they sell, is imported. And by imported, I DON’T mean Ireland or Italy.
Probably true. I never made claims where the clothing comes from. I’m just vouching for the quality of the merchandise.
Too close to home, eh?
“A dollar store opens up in an economically depressed area”
“not merely a byproduct of economic distress, they’re a cause of it.”
They don’t even know what they’re saying here.
Since the store’s opening follows the poverty, not precedes it, their theory is proven incorrect.
Just add good bulletproof glass and we have a viable business plan.
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