9 ms·

Small Town America vs. Big Box Stores

58 points by spking 1y ago

briandear 1y ago
> We don't want a corporate, faceless box store coming in with no stake in our community. Who is “we?” If the community wants Washington General, then they’ll shop there. If they want the lowest possible prices, they’ll shop at Dollar General. What it sounds like is that Washington General wants effectively a tariff on Dollar General so people won’t shop there. Because if it’s strictly “what’s best for the community,” then the community will decide what they value. It sounds like Washington General doesn’t want the community to be able to make that choice. If nobody shops at Dollar General, then they’ll close it down. Not that it matters, but I despise Dollar General-type stores: generally cheap junk, so I personally chose the more expensive specialty store: but I can easily afford to do that. The Dollar General ICP is a person that doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. So it’s a bit arrogant to suggest that people without a lot of money should be subsidizing someone’s business just because it makes people feel better. That’s a luxury many people don’t have.
- psunavy03 1y ago
  The NIMBY mindset cares about "neighborhood character" more than poor people, at least in general. Edit: Ah, I see the source now. It comes at basically everything from . . . a particular point of view.
  - jmye 1y ago
    That’s a pretty dishonest reading of this topic. Do you think DG “cares” about poor people? Do you think people might worry about poor people being exploited and ending up worse off? Or is this just a “Label X is my whole entire personality so anything that isn’t Label X must be horrible and the only people in favor of it are actually evil” terminally online thing?
    - psunavy03 1y ago
      Uhh . . . that's a pretty dishonest reading of my reading. I have no inclination that DG as an institution "cares" about poor people. But neither does an institution whose goal is solely to fight suburban sprawl and ensure "neighborhood character." StrongTowns hammers on about minor things like whether or not storefronts face the sidewalks, whether or not there are chain stores vs mom-and-pops, etc. But if I'm paycheck-to-paycheck, it matters a lot more that I have an opportunity to buy things for cheap than it does whether I'm getting my stuff from a chain store or a local business. Middle-class people have the luxury of being picky about where their things are sourced from. Poor people need to put food on the table regardless of whether or not it comes from Dollar General or Wal-Mart. I support local businesses when I can, but I am also a middle-class professional, not someone making minimum wage. As an example, I have a great farmer's market I get stuff from in the summer. But the price of vegetables or meat there is like twice what it is at Safeway. If someone is poor, it matters more that they have an opportunity to buy healthy vegetables and chicken for cheap that it is that they're buying locally-sourced organic free-range vegetables and chicken for twice the cost, or else you're just furthering the obesity epidemic.
- q_andrew 1y ago
  Dollar General is a mega corporation that can operate on an entirely different level than local stores. They pay their workers less and the profits go out of state. On a store-by-store basis though, Dollar general is a fragile establishment, management will not hesitate to abandon the location if they are spending too much money propping up the store. And the overhead for these stores is higher than it needs to be - they build way larger stores and parking lots than they actually need. The local dry goods store has grown only to the size that it requires, and those profits go towards its own survival. It provides cultural value, economic opportunities, and is more likely to improve the lives of people living nearby. Strong towns (who made the article) is a grassroots nonprofit that finds concrete ways for US cities to curb the effects of urban sprawl. One of those ways is to acknowledge that inviting huge commercial ventures into your small local economy is like bringing a giant mammal to roam free on a small island nation. It's probably going to affect the ecosystem in ways that don't suit the environment.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
    They can also operate at a loss until they drive out all competition, and then raise prices - so that you probably end up at the same prices as before (or worse) - but with a much worse quality product (i.e. how they achieve better margins).
    - lief79 1y ago
      Or open up more stores then the region can support, remove the local competition, and then close theirs stores as uncompetitive. The small town (population < 2000) my Mom grew up in is currently supporting their IGA as well as the Dollar Store, but my understanding is that they're in better shape then a lot of their small town neighbors. One or two successful businesses makes a huge difference at that level. If something happened to their one large employer, a food factory, then they'd really be in trouble. The other businesses are restaurant sized at the largest.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1y ago
iambateman 1y ago
I _love_ Strong Towns but I want to push back against this article. Strong Towns is a leading voice on YIMBY, but this is reminiscent of the common arguments I hear from NIMBY folks..."they shouldn't be allowed to build here because ____" is definitionally NIMBY. While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle." The reason people shop there is because the store provides what they need at a lower price. If I can buy the same milk for $3 from DG or $4.50 from Grandma's Really Adorable Milk Store, I'm going to Dollar General. No swindle here...that's just a better deal. > “We feed off of what they don’t do, they can’t do,” the owner of Mike’s Hardware & Supply explained. Great! Do that. Outcompete them on what makes you distinctly valuable, and if you're right, people will pick you. I go to my hardware store instead of Lowes because I know there's a 70-year-old guy who knows more about my project than I do, and I'm happy to pay an extra couple dollars to ask him questions while I buy a socket wrench. Now, I get that government subsidies tilt the scales...but rather than yell that it's unfair, let's elect politicians who are ready to build incentive programs to provide similar (or better) subsidies for small businesses who provide fresh food and other goods which are crucial for local communities. Small businesses may need to gather together in some cooperative or union-type organization in order to present a more unified bloc to the political class but that's just the nature of living in a big country. Big business is here to stay, whether we like it or not. And people are _choosing_ those businesses because they think they provide good value for money.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle." In the case of Dollar General specifically, it is literally a swindle, with high levels of violations of deceptive pricing laws (higher prices at checkout that marked) — and which has followed up on those by removing customer-facing POS screens in many stors, high levels of weights and measures violations, and — swindling a different side of the community — labor and occupational safety violations.
  - iambateman 1y ago
    That may be the case, but that’s not the point the article is making. Obviously if they’re breaking the law, they should be held accountable.
alibrarydweller 1y ago
The tension this article writes about can be expressed to a tech audience as a compression problem. Dollar General wins out on low prices - essentially compressing their value prop onto a single dimension, prices. They won't do the Strong Towns things like sponsor a park or thoughtfully curate what they sell to fit community needs. There's no button to press in a DG that says "sell more eggplants please". The value of a small scale community business is many things on different axes, of which delivering goods for money is one. Much like when you compress a jpeg for size at the expense of image quality, you can optimize for one thing to the total exclusion of others. For a customer at the till it's totally reasonable to think on that one axis, but it's important that there be voices tasked with appreciating the whole. It's a need of society to think of what's a better lossless algorithm so that we can efficiently enjoy the benefits of all dimensions.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  > There's no button to press in a DG that says "sell more eggplants please". Yes, there is. They absolutely manage stock based on demand, as does every other chain store.
  - jacobgkau 1y ago
    I took that request not literally as "make more sales" (they can't control demand, after all), but rather as "stock more varieties." Your local Dollar General is likely going to have the same eggplants available as all the other ones in the country, or at least that's the idea behind that line.
  - maxsilver 1y ago
    As someone who worked at a corporate-private-equity-owned Dollar store (but not DG, specifically), I highly doubt that's true. They "manage stock on demand" in that they count SKUs sold and replenish as needed / as they have availability, sure. And they probably do a inventory / count day once in a while, to account for loss(shrink). But that's about it. They might occasionally get to pick from a few custom options from the internal catalog, but they likely aren't doing any kind of active stock management, and store staff (even store managers) likely have close-to-zero direct influence over what is carried.
parpfish 1y ago
> "we're not against change, we're not against business, if you want to open a nice little coffee shop and bookstore, but Dollar General just isn't quite a good fit." this line stood out to me because it mirrored a lot of debate in my small rural community when a dollar general proposed moving in (spoiler alert: DG won). the debates around DG had a way of exposing some previously-unseen class and economic divisions in the the community. it wasn't a NIMBY vs YIMBY thing -- both wanted development -- but they just had very different needs and expectations. you have one group that wants the cute little bookstores/coffeeshops to preserve "local character". they may not be rich, but they aren't struggling day to day so they say "I don't mind paying a little extra to support local business". then there's the other group which says "i don't have any extra money to support local business". they'd love to be in a position to worry about local character, but today they just need to be able to afford another single roll of TP and have some snacks for their kid after school. in my community, these two groups existed in their own little bubbles never really interacted until the DG debate came up, so in a way it was good for dissolving some of those boundaries.
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  “it wasn't a NIMBY vs YIMBY thing -- both wanted development” This distinction isnt the most important point here but this is very much NIMBY-ism. Blocking a development because the community has different opinions about what should be built, particularly opinions they don’t want to fund via their tax dollars is basically textbook NIMBY-ism.
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    It doesn’t have to be tax dollars funded. It’s about what they “want” and don’t “want”. It’s about having an opinion, almost entirely shaped by self interest, and not caring about anything else. That’s textbook NIMBY-ism.
  - parpfish 1y ago
    in this particular case you're probably right, especially for the people opposed to DG on 'local character' grounds. but it's not like YIMBYs literally say "yes" to every development. there's also DG opposition on the basis of creating sprawl on the outskirts of town, and that's the type of opposition you'd probably hear from the strongtowns-loving YIMBY types. they are strongly opposed to the types of developments that increase sprawl because of long-term infrastructure costs, reduced walkability, etc.
kstrauser 1y ago
My family lived in a smallish town for a while, and I've gotta say that chain stores were a godsend. We did business with local shops whenever we could, but the stock variety was inherently much smaller than we found at Target (or even Dollar General). Much as we would have preferred to be able to pay our neighbor $1.50 for an item, it was awfully nice to find nicer items for $1 at the chain place. Don't get me started at the local groceries which were associated with the large employer in town, a giant grocery wholesaler. I definitely want to support my neighbors, but I don't want to buy Local Brand Ketchup. I want Heinz, darnit.
- rexpop 1y ago
  > I definitely want to support my neighbors, but I don't want to buy Local Brand Ketchup. I want Heinz, darnit. For the love of God, why??
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-co...
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Probably because they've become accustomed to the taste so that taste is what their brain associates with as Ketchup. Switching to someone's local brand that will have a different recipe/formula (probably a lot less sugar), the taste will be different. To their brain, this is not ketchup rather some tomato paste sauce. Obviously, ketchup is not going to be the only thing that this fits. Pretty much any processed food sold in the US under major labels are going to be loaded with sugar that decent folks would question why it's being used.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      I picked that as a random example, but yeah. We all have brands that we think of as "the" canonical version of that thing. There are certain chili powders I prefer. Certain spaghetti sauces. Certain grape jellies. Certain barbeque sauces. The others aren't bad. They're also generally high quality items. It's just that they're different from what my mouth expects.
BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
I feel like this article failed to effectively discuss the very important point that is how these big box stores tend to be a drain on the city's economy. It's sorta there but generally these stores tend to make communities poorer in the long run.
- stemlord 1y ago
  Seemed pretty clear to me: they not only don't pay nearly as much in taxes as local businesses but are subsidized by local taxpayers
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Why would they not pay as much taxes as local businesses? I have never seen a tax rate that differentiates between local and non local businesses.
    - yesfitz 1y ago
      I found the answer to your question by opening the article and using Ctrl+F to find the word "tax". Here are the excerpts: >"In an episode of the Strong Towns podcast, [Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance] explains how companies like Walmart or Target convince local officials that they’re bringing jobs and financial benefits to the area often in exchange for tax breaks and subsidies to cover the cost of land or construction. Unfortunately, many local governments are too quick to take the bait." >"ILSR also discovered that large corporations benefit from tax loopholes, enabling them to avoid paying income taxes in about half the states they operate in. Meanwhile, small businesses don’t have that luxury—they pay taxes on 100% of their earnings." >"This uneven playing field places local businesses at a disadvantage, as they are required to bear a higher tax burden than their corporate competitors. A similar dynamic plays out on the federal level, where corporations may operate in part through shell companies based in tax havens." Those were all taken from the last 4 paragraphs of the section under the heading "The Big Box Swindle" (the first section after the introduction).
      - 1y ago
mycall 1y ago
On aside, visiting Mexico City now and I went to Sears and Woolworths. These are extinct in the US but could we still consider them Big Box Stores?
- h2zizzle 1y ago
  Department stores. I think the strategy was different. Big box focus on driving down prices by working with the cheapest suppliers they can get away with. IIUC Sears in particular was more vertically-integrated, and focused more on in-house brands that cost only a bit less than name brands, but were of high-enough quality that they became brand names themselves. Would love someone with knowledge of this to chime in.
jollyllama 1y ago
Is there anything in DG that's healthy? The garbage these stores are feeding people is an externality that is contributing to negative health outcomes. To allow it is to condemn the rural underclass to eating toxic waste, it's equivalent to allowing them to live in lean to slums and shouldn't be allowed.
- Lendal 1y ago
  If they only sold healthy things it wouldn't change anything. The jobs are low wage. Local businesses employed more workers and paid more than DG or Walmart do, so they went out of business. Workers had no choice but to work at DG or WM for the lower wage. Regional wages cratered. Eventually the community economically just can't afford to exist anymore and also becomes dependent on government assistance. This story has been replayed across the entire country but it happens in big cities too.
eorthling 1y ago
I've spent the majority of my adult life in small towns, some co-opted by chain stores and some resisting. Have to agree that the terrible space usage and car-centric design of these buildings has a huge impact. I don't totally get the "keep your money local" angle - nobody is going to locally produce toilet paper or toothpaste or affordable home goods that you need today and don't exist in thrift stores, but yes the chain stores don't source local goods even when locals are desperate enough to sell for competitive prices, and that's not good for your local economy. But another aspect I didn't see mentioned is the disruption of skill and network development. The jobs these places bring are largely entry-level menial jobs. Anyone who takes that job is not learning business skills or apprenticing in something their town needs. Not only that, but the new chain store is not going to build relationships with small businesses in the region, leaving your town more exposed to national/global economic disruptions. I've also heard gossip about some dollar generals in small towns being fronts for drug activity, but I don't know.
dventimi 1y ago
This is what the neo-liberal economic program has been doing all my life. "Free-trade" and globalization just mean that companies deploy lobbyists to DC and state houses to write legislation that picks winners and losers, erect barriers for some and tear them down for others, and concentrate wealth in the hands of a tiny few while spreading enough of it around to the professional managerial class and petit-bourgeoisie to keep the whole machine running. Blue-collar workers were put in direct competition with low wage workers overseas while white-collar workers were protected from foreign competition, unionization declined under constant attack, and middle-class wages stagnated while coastal and urban elites pulled away. Middle-class people were mollified, however, by rising living standards courtesy of cheap goods delivered by long supply chains connecting far-flung places with big box stores that landed right on the outskirts of their little towns, by the good graces of their hardworking counterparts toiling away in those far-flung places, and by large trade surpluses and easy money. And, it did have social consequences: the withering of small town life, the atomization of community, and the working-class revolts of the last 20 years as the machine started to sputter. It's important to note that it doesn't have to be this way. This isn't the natural order of things. There IS no "natural order of things." This is a choice. You're free to like that choice if it suits you, but nobody is obliged to like it, and if you don't there is a tried-and-true program for forcing other choices: organize, unionize, and galvanize.

58 points by spking 1y ago

> We don't want a corporate, faceless box store coming in with no stake in our community. Who is “we?” If the community wants Washington General, then they’ll shop there. If they want the lowest possible prices, they’ll shop at Dollar General. What it sounds like is that Washington General wants effectively a tariff on Dollar General so people won’t shop there. Because if it’s strictly “what’s best for the community,” then the community will decide what they value. It sounds like Washington General doesn’t want the community to be able to make that choice. If nobody shops at Dollar General, then they’ll close it down. Not that it matters, but I despise Dollar General-type stores: generally cheap junk, so I personally chose the more expensive specialty store: but I can easily afford to do that. The Dollar General ICP is a person that doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. So it’s a bit arrogant to suggest that people without a lot of money should be subsidizing someone’s business just because it makes people feel better. That’s a luxury many people don’t have.

psunavy03 1y ago
The NIMBY mindset cares about "neighborhood character" more than poor people, at least in general. Edit: Ah, I see the source now. It comes at basically everything from . . . a particular point of view.
- jmye 1y ago
  That’s a pretty dishonest reading of this topic. Do you think DG “cares” about poor people? Do you think people might worry about poor people being exploited and ending up worse off? Or is this just a “Label X is my whole entire personality so anything that isn’t Label X must be horrible and the only people in favor of it are actually evil” terminally online thing?
  - psunavy03 1y ago
    Uhh . . . that's a pretty dishonest reading of my reading. I have no inclination that DG as an institution "cares" about poor people. But neither does an institution whose goal is solely to fight suburban sprawl and ensure "neighborhood character." StrongTowns hammers on about minor things like whether or not storefronts face the sidewalks, whether or not there are chain stores vs mom-and-pops, etc. But if I'm paycheck-to-paycheck, it matters a lot more that I have an opportunity to buy things for cheap than it does whether I'm getting my stuff from a chain store or a local business. Middle-class people have the luxury of being picky about where their things are sourced from. Poor people need to put food on the table regardless of whether or not it comes from Dollar General or Wal-Mart. I support local businesses when I can, but I am also a middle-class professional, not someone making minimum wage. As an example, I have a great farmer's market I get stuff from in the summer. But the price of vegetables or meat there is like twice what it is at Safeway. If someone is poor, it matters more that they have an opportunity to buy healthy vegetables and chicken for cheap that it is that they're buying locally-sourced organic free-range vegetables and chicken for twice the cost, or else you're just furthering the obesity epidemic.
q_andrew 1y ago
Dollar General is a mega corporation that can operate on an entirely different level than local stores. They pay their workers less and the profits go out of state. On a store-by-store basis though, Dollar general is a fragile establishment, management will not hesitate to abandon the location if they are spending too much money propping up the store. And the overhead for these stores is higher than it needs to be - they build way larger stores and parking lots than they actually need. The local dry goods store has grown only to the size that it requires, and those profits go towards its own survival. It provides cultural value, economic opportunities, and is more likely to improve the lives of people living nearby. Strong towns (who made the article) is a grassroots nonprofit that finds concrete ways for US cities to curb the effects of urban sprawl. One of those ways is to acknowledge that inviting huge commercial ventures into your small local economy is like bringing a giant mammal to roam free on a small island nation. It's probably going to affect the ecosystem in ways that don't suit the environment.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
  They can also operate at a loss until they drive out all competition, and then raise prices - so that you probably end up at the same prices as before (or worse) - but with a much worse quality product (i.e. how they achieve better margins).
  - lief79 1y ago
    Or open up more stores then the region can support, remove the local competition, and then close theirs stores as uncompetitive. The small town (population < 2000) my Mom grew up in is currently supporting their IGA as well as the Dollar Store, but my understanding is that they're in better shape then a lot of their small town neighbors. One or two successful businesses makes a huge difference at that level. If something happened to their one large employer, a food factory, then they'd really be in trouble. The other businesses are restaurant sized at the largest.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 1y ago

iambateman 1y ago

I _love_ Strong Towns but I want to push back against this article. Strong Towns is a leading voice on YIMBY, but this is reminiscent of the common arguments I hear from NIMBY folks..."they shouldn't be allowed to build here because ____" is definitionally NIMBY. While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle." The reason people shop there is because the store provides what they need at a lower price. If I can buy the same milk for $3 from DG or $4.50 from Grandma's Really Adorable Milk Store, I'm going to Dollar General. No swindle here...that's just a better deal. > “We feed off of what they don’t do, they can’t do,” the owner of Mike’s Hardware & Supply explained. Great! Do that. Outcompete them on what makes you distinctly valuable, and if you're right, people will pick you. I go to my hardware store instead of Lowes because I know there's a 70-year-old guy who knows more about my project than I do, and I'm happy to pay an extra couple dollars to ask him questions while I buy a socket wrench. Now, I get that government subsidies tilt the scales...but rather than yell that it's unfair, let's elect politicians who are ready to build incentive programs to provide similar (or better) subsidies for small businesses who provide fresh food and other goods which are crucial for local communities. Small businesses may need to gather together in some cooperative or union-type organization in order to present a more unified bloc to the political class but that's just the nature of living in a big country. Big business is here to stay, whether we like it or not. And people are _choosing_ those businesses because they think they provide good value for money.

dragonwriter 1y ago
> While I don't love Dollar General or shop there very often, I have a hard time understanding why it's a "swindle." In the case of Dollar General specifically, it is literally a swindle, with high levels of violations of deceptive pricing laws (higher prices at checkout that marked) — and which has followed up on those by removing customer-facing POS screens in many stors, high levels of weights and measures violations, and — swindling a different side of the community — labor and occupational safety violations.
- iambateman 1y ago
  That may be the case, but that’s not the point the article is making. Obviously if they’re breaking the law, they should be held accountable.

alibrarydweller 1y ago

The tension this article writes about can be expressed to a tech audience as a compression problem. Dollar General wins out on low prices - essentially compressing their value prop onto a single dimension, prices. They won't do the Strong Towns things like sponsor a park or thoughtfully curate what they sell to fit community needs. There's no button to press in a DG that says "sell more eggplants please". The value of a small scale community business is many things on different axes, of which delivering goods for money is one. Much like when you compress a jpeg for size at the expense of image quality, you can optimize for one thing to the total exclusion of others. For a customer at the till it's totally reasonable to think on that one axis, but it's important that there be voices tasked with appreciating the whole. It's a need of society to think of what's a better lossless algorithm so that we can efficiently enjoy the benefits of all dimensions.

potato3732842 1y ago
> There's no button to press in a DG that says "sell more eggplants please". Yes, there is. They absolutely manage stock based on demand, as does every other chain store.
- jacobgkau 1y ago
  I took that request not literally as "make more sales" (they can't control demand, after all), but rather as "stock more varieties." Your local Dollar General is likely going to have the same eggplants available as all the other ones in the country, or at least that's the idea behind that line.
- maxsilver 1y ago
  As someone who worked at a corporate-private-equity-owned Dollar store (but not DG, specifically), I highly doubt that's true. They "manage stock on demand" in that they count SKUs sold and replenish as needed / as they have availability, sure. And they probably do a inventory / count day once in a while, to account for loss(shrink). But that's about it. They might occasionally get to pick from a few custom options from the internal catalog, but they likely aren't doing any kind of active stock management, and store staff (even store managers) likely have close-to-zero direct influence over what is carried.

parpfish 1y ago

> "we're not against change, we're not against business, if you want to open a nice little coffee shop and bookstore, but Dollar General just isn't quite a good fit." this line stood out to me because it mirrored a lot of debate in my small rural community when a dollar general proposed moving in (spoiler alert: DG won). the debates around DG had a way of exposing some previously-unseen class and economic divisions in the the community. it wasn't a NIMBY vs YIMBY thing -- both wanted development -- but they just had very different needs and expectations. you have one group that wants the cute little bookstores/coffeeshops to preserve "local character". they may not be rich, but they aren't struggling day to day so they say "I don't mind paying a little extra to support local business". then there's the other group which says "i don't have any extra money to support local business". they'd love to be in a position to worry about local character, but today they just need to be able to afford another single roll of TP and have some snacks for their kid after school. in my community, these two groups existed in their own little bubbles never really interacted until the DG debate came up, so in a way it was good for dissolving some of those boundaries.

pj_mukh 1y ago
“it wasn't a NIMBY vs YIMBY thing -- both wanted development” This distinction isnt the most important point here but this is very much NIMBY-ism. Blocking a development because the community has different opinions about what should be built, particularly opinions they don’t want to fund via their tax dollars is basically textbook NIMBY-ism.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  It doesn’t have to be tax dollars funded. It’s about what they “want” and don’t “want”. It’s about having an opinion, almost entirely shaped by self interest, and not caring about anything else. That’s textbook NIMBY-ism.
- parpfish 1y ago
  in this particular case you're probably right, especially for the people opposed to DG on 'local character' grounds. but it's not like YIMBYs literally say "yes" to every development. there's also DG opposition on the basis of creating sprawl on the outskirts of town, and that's the type of opposition you'd probably hear from the strongtowns-loving YIMBY types. they are strongly opposed to the types of developments that increase sprawl because of long-term infrastructure costs, reduced walkability, etc.

kstrauser 1y ago

My family lived in a smallish town for a while, and I've gotta say that chain stores were a godsend. We did business with local shops whenever we could, but the stock variety was inherently much smaller than we found at Target (or even Dollar General). Much as we would have preferred to be able to pay our neighbor $1.50 for an item, it was awfully nice to find nicer items for $1 at the chain place. Don't get me started at the local groceries which were associated with the large employer in town, a giant grocery wholesaler. I definitely want to support my neighbors, but I don't want to buy Local Brand Ketchup. I want Heinz, darnit.

rexpop 1y ago
> I definitely want to support my neighbors, but I don't want to buy Local Brand Ketchup. I want Heinz, darnit. For the love of God, why??
- crazygringo 1y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-co...
- dylan604 1y ago
  Probably because they've become accustomed to the taste so that taste is what their brain associates with as Ketchup. Switching to someone's local brand that will have a different recipe/formula (probably a lot less sugar), the taste will be different. To their brain, this is not ketchup rather some tomato paste sauce. Obviously, ketchup is not going to be the only thing that this fits. Pretty much any processed food sold in the US under major labels are going to be loaded with sugar that decent folks would question why it's being used.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    I picked that as a random example, but yeah. We all have brands that we think of as "the" canonical version of that thing. There are certain chili powders I prefer. Certain spaghetti sauces. Certain grape jellies. Certain barbeque sauces. The others aren't bad. They're also generally high quality items. It's just that they're different from what my mouth expects.

BrawnyBadger53 1y ago

I feel like this article failed to effectively discuss the very important point that is how these big box stores tend to be a drain on the city's economy. It's sorta there but generally these stores tend to make communities poorer in the long run.

stemlord 1y ago
Seemed pretty clear to me: they not only don't pay nearly as much in taxes as local businesses but are subsidized by local taxpayers
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Why would they not pay as much taxes as local businesses? I have never seen a tax rate that differentiates between local and non local businesses.
  - yesfitz 1y ago
    I found the answer to your question by opening the article and using Ctrl+F to find the word "tax". Here are the excerpts: >"In an episode of the Strong Towns podcast, [Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance] explains how companies like Walmart or Target convince local officials that they’re bringing jobs and financial benefits to the area often in exchange for tax breaks and subsidies to cover the cost of land or construction. Unfortunately, many local governments are too quick to take the bait." >"ILSR also discovered that large corporations benefit from tax loopholes, enabling them to avoid paying income taxes in about half the states they operate in. Meanwhile, small businesses don’t have that luxury—they pay taxes on 100% of their earnings." >"This uneven playing field places local businesses at a disadvantage, as they are required to bear a higher tax burden than their corporate competitors. A similar dynamic plays out on the federal level, where corporations may operate in part through shell companies based in tax havens." Those were all taken from the last 4 paragraphs of the section under the heading "The Big Box Swindle" (the first section after the introduction).
    - 1y ago

mycall 1y ago

On aside, visiting Mexico City now and I went to Sears and Woolworths. These are extinct in the US but could we still consider them Big Box Stores?

h2zizzle 1y ago
Department stores. I think the strategy was different. Big box focus on driving down prices by working with the cheapest suppliers they can get away with. IIUC Sears in particular was more vertically-integrated, and focused more on in-house brands that cost only a bit less than name brands, but were of high-enough quality that they became brand names themselves. Would love someone with knowledge of this to chime in.

jollyllama 1y ago

Is there anything in DG that's healthy? The garbage these stores are feeding people is an externality that is contributing to negative health outcomes. To allow it is to condemn the rural underclass to eating toxic waste, it's equivalent to allowing them to live in lean to slums and shouldn't be allowed.

Lendal 1y ago
If they only sold healthy things it wouldn't change anything. The jobs are low wage. Local businesses employed more workers and paid more than DG or Walmart do, so they went out of business. Workers had no choice but to work at DG or WM for the lower wage. Regional wages cratered. Eventually the community economically just can't afford to exist anymore and also becomes dependent on government assistance. This story has been replayed across the entire country but it happens in big cities too.

eorthling 1y ago

I've spent the majority of my adult life in small towns, some co-opted by chain stores and some resisting. Have to agree that the terrible space usage and car-centric design of these buildings has a huge impact. I don't totally get the "keep your money local" angle - nobody is going to locally produce toilet paper or toothpaste or affordable home goods that you need today and don't exist in thrift stores, but yes the chain stores don't source local goods even when locals are desperate enough to sell for competitive prices, and that's not good for your local economy. But another aspect I didn't see mentioned is the disruption of skill and network development. The jobs these places bring are largely entry-level menial jobs. Anyone who takes that job is not learning business skills or apprenticing in something their town needs. Not only that, but the new chain store is not going to build relationships with small businesses in the region, leaving your town more exposed to national/global economic disruptions. I've also heard gossip about some dollar generals in small towns being fronts for drug activity, but I don't know.

dventimi 1y ago

This is what the neo-liberal economic program has been doing all my life. "Free-trade" and globalization just mean that companies deploy lobbyists to DC and state houses to write legislation that picks winners and losers, erect barriers for some and tear them down for others, and concentrate wealth in the hands of a tiny few while spreading enough of it around to the professional managerial class and petit-bourgeoisie to keep the whole machine running. Blue-collar workers were put in direct competition with low wage workers overseas while white-collar workers were protected from foreign competition, unionization declined under constant attack, and middle-class wages stagnated while coastal and urban elites pulled away. Middle-class people were mollified, however, by rising living standards courtesy of cheap goods delivered by long supply chains connecting far-flung places with big box stores that landed right on the outskirts of their little towns, by the good graces of their hardworking counterparts toiling away in those far-flung places, and by large trade surpluses and easy money. And, it did have social consequences: the withering of small town life, the atomization of community, and the working-class revolts of the last 20 years as the machine started to sputter. It's important to note that it doesn't have to be this way. This isn't the natural order of things. There IS no "natural order of things." This is a choice. You're free to like that choice if it suits you, but nobody is obliged to like it, and if you don't there is a tried-and-true program for forcing other choices: organize, unionize, and galvanize.