Good point which doesn’t get talked about much.
There are enough people in the inner city and ghetto areas to support supermarkets. Even in low income areas, people need to eat, and they have money plus food stamps to spend on food. The issue isn’t that the stores couldn’t sell their products in the ghetto. The issue is that costs of doing business, for security costs, and intangibles such as losses incurred due to inventory disappearing, make it a losing business proposition to locate stores in these areas.
You can tell a lot about the health of a community by seeing what types of businesses are located there. Or if the types of businesses you normally see in other places are absent.
If there is a 'food desert' in Chicago, then it's the liberal DemonRat's fault.
Yep. Where I work it’s wigs, nail salons, hair braiding, cell phones, check cashing, drug stores, bodegas and tax preparation services. Four of ‘em in a two block stretch. Athletic shoes (not sporting goods).
We got a Walgreen’s, a CVS and a Rite Aid on three of four corners of one intersection. For three blocks on either side, every ‘taxpayer’ building is abandoned and collapsing. A town of 40,000 bordering a mid-sized city, and it has one actual bank branch and one save-a-something grocery store. And this is where everal major bus routes run right by the front doors.
The plethora of tax prep servicws was a mystery for a minute - could taxes in the ‘hood be that daunting? Nah, once I realized that they are just payday lenders like the check stores. “Get your refund today!” I won’t name them, but let’s say the are Jewitt Hackson (2 offices!), HNR Brick and The Big Green Lady With the Torch in New York Harbor. People lined up for them to open in the morning.
Dung beetles, all of ‘em (the businesses, that is). Living off of corpses and piles of crap. Oh well, I guess even dung beetles have a role in the ecology.