Communities and neighborhoods are getting bucked over by dollar stores

Private interests are deliberately (and insidiously) channeling demographics – in destructive ways.

At first glance, dollar stores appear to be predicated on an attractive business model. They seemingly provide their customers with convenience and selection and value. They’re neighbors.

In some parts of the country, they’ve become ubiquitous.

So dollar stores are good examples of economic development. They’re welcome additions to communities. Right?

Wrong!

Dollar stores actually hollow out locales. They constrict job opportunities. They strip out the financial vitality of entire communities. They lead to food deserts. They sink poor people deeper into poverty.

The money they make is not returned to local economies, either. Most of it is swept up and sent to distant corporate headquarters.

That’s not economic development, friends. That’s economic degradation. That’s economic dislocation.

“While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it.” (1)

“In small towns and urban neighborhoods alike, dollar stores are triggering the closure of grocery stores, eliminating jobs, and further eroding the prospects of the vulnerable communities they target. These chains both rely on and fuel the growing economic precarity and widening inequality that plague America.” (1)

There’s more.

“Essentially what the dollar stores are betting on in a large way is that we are going to have a permanent underclass in America. It’s based on the concept that the jobs went away, and the jobs are never coming back, and that things aren’t going to get better in any of these places.” (2)

In effect, private interests are deliberately (and insidiously) channeling demographics – in destructive ways.

Our very social compact is rent and torn.

Today’s takeaway? Beware. Dollar stores are economic parasites.

Sources:

(1) https://ilsr.org/dollar-stores-factsheet/

(2) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-11/dollar-general-hits-a-gold-mine-in-rural-america

Background:

http://mainandlake.com/2016/05/dollar-store-ruined-town-dollar-general-mean-donnelsville/

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-dollar-stores-became-magnets-for-crime-and-killing

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/business/dollar-general-opposition/index.html

https://progressive.org/magazine/dollar-stores-prey-on-the-poor-sainato-191001/

https://saferchemicals.org/2015/07/27/targeted-toxicity-dollar-stores-and-environmental-justice/