
Cities move to ban dollar stores, blaming them for residents’ poor diets - fortran77
https://www.city-journal.org/banning-dollar-stores
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whatthesmack
It seems a tad elitist to 1) prevent dollar stores from opening, and 2) force
existing ones to sell more expensive food. What if that dollar store food is a
person’s only financial option? Forcing them to buy something they cannot
afford is unhelpful. This sounds like a supermarket lobby or politicians that
think they know better than the people doing the shopping about their own
situation. I live a comfortable life and would love to see people eat
healthily, but this is just more “government knows best” attitude, when the
reality is that oneself knows one’s own situation the best. Let people make
their own decisions.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Is it elitist if there's a real problem in stores that appeal most to the poor
and disadvantaged? I don't know how they operate in the US, or the range
carried, and the article doesn't expand too far, but...

If US dollar stores are anything like UK pound stores, they are _vastly_ more
expensive for food than the discount supermarkets -- Aldi, Lidl, Iceland and
similar. They're OK to great value for many non-food things, like a cheap
spare pair of reading glasses, notebook, pencils or USB cable etc. If there's
a pound store it's fairly safe bet one of the above three supermarkets will
have an outlet not too far away too.

Nearly all the food they sell is a custom, pound store only size, and the
price per gram or litre is pathetic for anyone lacking funds. They trade on
_appearing_ to offer price advantage, perhaps 10p or 20p in the pound cheaper
than the supermarket, by cutting 25 or 35% of the product. If you aren't
comparing price/unit you're basically getting scammed by poundstores on all
food and drink. Of course they appeal most to the section of society most
uncomfortable with maths by _seeming_ cheap, even if the truth is on the small
print of the shelf label.

They positively drip with unhealthy only options. Miles of chocolate, cereal,
milk shake, soft drinks, tinned beans. No veg, no rice, no pasta, pulses, low
sugar soft drinks, milk itself.

~~~
JamesBarney
I really think banning poor individuals from choosing to shop at a dollar
store because you assume you know better is elitism.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Are banning predatory practices and usurious rates of interest, restricting
medicines, smoking and gambling etc elitism too? If so, I'm all in favour of
it, even when I am the "victim" of said elitism, such as I was when I was a
smoker. There need to be limits placed on abusive behaviour, whether
individual or corporate. Still don't think it's elitism though.

~~~
JamesBarney
I don't think banning predatory practices is elitist. Keeping people from
being lied to or mislead isn't elitist.

I think banning usurious interest rates can be elitist. But a lot of upper
middle class politicians don't understand how expensive it can be to not have
money. And getting hit with overdraft fees, having your electricity shut off,
or not being able to make it to work because your car broke down can all be
very expensive and make the usurious interest rates look cheap.

I don't see the connection but restricting medicine but I do think that non
addictive medication is overly restricted.

Smoking and gambling(and drinking) are specific vices and restricting them
isn't elitist but banning pall malls would be.

I'm not against elitist policies in principle. Of there is a lot of data that
a particular intervention has a strong positive effect than I'm for it. But
I'm just suspicious of a bunch upper middle class politicians deciding what's
best for a lower class one and legislating away their options.

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jamespitts
Rather than focus on the dollar stores, the city should focus on itself and
its role in the problem. The structure of the street, zoning, parking
requirements, vast distances between living places and stores, etc. are key to
the existence of the big box stores.

The structure chosen by the city planners years ago literally makes the big
box store feasible to economically exist, and reduces the feasibility of mom
and pop stores with healthier options. Besides encouraging terrible food
options, this situation has generated numerous other social and health-related
problems.

Take a walk in the poorest neighborhood in your region which has small-width
streets, walking distance between homes and stores, stores on the sidewalk,
and terrible parking options. In that neighborhood, you will find fruits and
vegetables being sold by mom and pops, and far less prominence of dollar
stores.

~~~
bertjk
Why is it assumed that mom & pop stores will opt to carry healthier options?

~~~
jamespitts
Perhaps one reason is competitive differentiation. When everyone is carrying
the same generic items, price becomes the main factor. Liquor stores generally
fight in that space. For neighborhood grocery stores, eye-catching and better
quality produce and meats can be a draw for customers.

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ErikAugust
I worked in a supermarket in high school and in college. We had a produce
section. Even a decent selection of organic. We still had a large segment of
shoppers who stocked up on 3 liter sodas and microwaveable pizzas, exactly the
kind of stuff people can now buy for cheaper at a dollar store. My guess is
banning dollar stores is a form of lobbying by their competition.

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mcadenhe
I think banning dollar stores will just mean people buy their honey buns and
hot pockets elsewhere.

Curtailing liberties like this seems to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The actual problem is not the substance, but the abuse of the substance.
Drinking too much, smoking too much, eating too much junk. We abuse because
it's gratifying. If only the delayed gratification of moderation could compete
on the daily.

I think the most productive thing that can be done right now is to discuss
what we as a society could do to support people who are in pursuit of delayed
gratification. How might we add components of immediate gratification to
delayed gratification?

For instance, if you're trudging through something and the end is still out of
sight, just hearing a, "you're doing a good job", can be immediately
gratifying.

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Simulacra
This is more of an anti-poverty move and trying to help anyone. In a lot of
places in America the dollar general is the only place you can buy groceries,
and even if you’re lucky enough to have a grocery store nearby, it’s not gonna
be some fancy Trader Joe’s. City should be encouraging more food and grocery
outlet’s to open, not restricting them.

~~~
WWLink
Heh. It's ironic that Trader Joe's tries to advertise that they are all about
"low cost healthy food" because I don't exactly see them clamoring to open a
store in the lower income parts of CA. It's always in the affluent
neighborhoods.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Many of the lower income neighborhoods in CA have demographics that tend to
shop more at ethnic markets. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a hard time
competing against carnicerias like Northgate

~~~
casefields
That's not why they avoid those neighborhoods. It's because they steal. That's
the problems the big supermarkets have out here in Los Angeles when
maintaining stores in poorer neighborhoods.

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pupdogg
This is sad! I don’t buy groceries at the dollar store but any and every time
I’m there, I will repeat to myself that whoever came up with this idea was a
genius...there are so many useful products for sale at the dollar store that
majority of the people don’t think about and instead buy at 200-500% markup at
other retailers. I almost always buy all greeting cards, balloons and wrapping
paper from the dollar store. Thank you for existing!

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_bxg1
Dollar stores seem like a short-sighted target. What if we treated hyper-
sugary/calorically-empty packaged snacks the way we do cigarettes? Ban
colorful packaging, mandate huge health warning labels, give them their own
special tax. Maybe you could even require people to be 18 to purchase them,
forcing parents to be responsible for the decision. Dollar stores (and other
stores that don't fit into such a narrow category) would be unable to sell
nearly as many and would be forced to introduce better options, or they just
wouldn't make money off of snacks at all.

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jariel
There are no such things as 'food deserts' and the healthiest food is in fact
the cheapest: it's in the produce section.

Kale and organic bananas are more expensive, but most veggies are ridiculously
cheap. Meat on sale is not so bad.

 _Processed_ food is more expensive.

"“We can statistically conclude that the effect on healthy eating from opening
new supermarkets was negligible at best,”

So people given a choice don't eat healthy? How is this news?

The poor are more likely to smoke as well - and that's expensive.

But the Dollar Store and Wallmart are giving vast, vast surpluses in wealth to
the poor by offering them really cheap, off brand stuff that's pretty much as
good as the branded stuff.

They might be contributing to the material wealth of the poor more than any
other thing.

If they didn't exist we'd be thinking: 'Stuff is cheap to make, we pay so much
for 'brand' \- how can we get inexpensive every day items to the poor'? Well,
that's called the Dollar Store.

Maybe we can spend more time teaching kids to cook _basic_ meals in school? I
don't know the answer but these do-gooders I feel are barking up the wrong
tree.

~~~
SaxonRobber
There are food deserts, they are the places where residents will spend hours
taking public transit just to go to the grocery store because they are too
poor to own a car. This fucks with your life, it will be a challenge to get to
the store every week and fresh produce will expire too quickly, so you need to
stock up on preserved and canned goods. And when you get home after work and
fridge is empty and the kids are hungry, you will end up going to a McDonald’s
or Gas station or whatever is close and just picking what you can get. If you
can’t believe this, then you have lived too privileged of a life.

~~~
jariel
"If you can’t believe this, then you have lived too privileged of a life."

I 'don't believe it' because it's false.

There are no actual 'food deserts', it's just a misleading term that the USDA:

"In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that
23.5 million Americans live in "food deserts", meaning that they live more
than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10
miles from a supermarket in rural areas"

1 mile in suburban areas? This is not an 'hour on a bus'.

In rural areas people must have cars.

There is no evidence presented that this is a causal factor in any ability to
access fresh food - in actual reality, science suggests quite the opposite.

There is _definitely_ no causal evidence that 'The Dollar Store' drives poor
nutritional habits. Conversely - there is very clear evidence of at least the
economic value of 'The Dollar Store' \- and if you closed them, you'd cause an
uproar and make poor people's lives even more difficult.

Ironically - only a group of completely out of touch 'privileged' people would
even consider shutting down dollar stores. If you asked poor people the answer
would be 'absolutely not' and they would be materially much worse off.

If they really want to do some economic and behavioural science, they can open
up fruit & veg markets in these supposed 'deserts' and see what happens. What
will happen is that they won't generate enough business to survive,
unfortunately. Which would imply there's a host of other factors at play:

"Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households
to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households
would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is
driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand
differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and
regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional
inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts." [1]

Healthy food does not generally cost more than unhealthy food [2], the issue
of 'Food Deserts' is only marginally relevant and the widespread availability
of 'Dollar Stores' is not relevant at all to nutrition.

[1]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/po...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/12/political-
incorrect-paper-day-food-deserts.html)

[2]
[https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=820d6e...](https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=820d6e1a-280e-47a6-b8c5-498bfa4657e3)

~~~
SaxonRobber
Living in a rural or suburban area doesn’t mean you have a car. There are
plenty of poor people who don’t own one or have limited access and must share.
At the Indian reserve by where I grew up almost no one had a car, they had to
walk and bus into town 2hrs each way to get what they needed. I have met
others with similar situations, single mothers who lost the car when their
husband left, or families where the breadwinner works a second job and the
rest of the family needs to make do without a car.

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elfexec
As another commenter pointed out, this seems like dollar stores' competition
with deeper pockets just trying to get rid of them.

If cities truly cared about their residents'poor diets, they would ban the
foods these people are buying ( soda, junk food, microwavable garbage, etc ).

Once the dollar stores close, then their customers would have to buy their
junk food at a supermarket.

Also, I'd suspect that Costco, Walmart and large supermarket chains lead far
more to poor diets and especially obesity than dollar stores.

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stickfigure
"Let them eat cake!"

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JDiculous
How about ending poverty instead so that poor people don't have to eat at the
dollar store because that's all they can afoord.

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jstewartmobile
Not everything in the produce section is an avocado. Many fruits/vegetables--
especially ones in-season--are cheaper than junk food. Fact of the matter is,
poors don't want them. If the inventory sold, the stores would carry it.

Covert gentrification maneuver. None of these city-libs give an actual damn
about minorities and poors.

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wsxcde
I feel both sides are making reasonable points. On the one hand, telling
people where they ought to buy their food from does seem like government
overreach. On the other hand, there's considerable evidence that people's
nutritional choices are terrible for their own and their children's health.

But there's an obvious way to resolve this debate! Run these laws as A/B
trials across demographically similar neighborhoods. Track people's health
outcomes over the course of the experiment. If the laws seem to be working in
making people healthier and happier, keep them. And if they don't, just drop
the law.

We're drowning in data! There's no need to go back to the world of
Socrates/Plato to try and figure everything out via thought experiments in
one's own head!

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habosa
You can't tell people what to eat. Figure out how to tell the market to tell
them what to eat. What's next, banning the dollar menu at McDonald's?

When something is the last resort, like dollar store food, taking it away
doesn't help anyone.

~~~
dawnerd
> What's next, banning the dollar menu at McDonald's?

McDonalds basically already did that themselves. They left it up to the
franchise owners and guess what? Every one I've seen have removed everything.

Taco Bell on the other hand...

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olliej
Here’s the problem: unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food.
(Functionally) making cheap food illegal is nonsense.

Another common oversight is that cooking food takes time, Refrigeration costs
money, etc, etc

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cascom
The time, scale, infrastructure question seems to be missing from this
conversation.

For example a roast chicken dinner with rice and vegetables that serves ~4 can
be had for ~$10 - which is pretty healthy and seems very cost effective.

But you need to assume a. You’re feeding ~4 and not one, you have a home with
an oven (and not just say a microwave), you have the time to go shopping, an
hour of time to cook (maybe only 15min of active time), and the basic home
economics skills to execute on this.

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alphabettsy
Absolutely the wrong approach.

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drharby
Sounds like anticompetitive muscling out with a trivial and nondata supported
claim for justification. If diets were a real concern of governments, there
exists more appropriate policy measures, but passing laws that apply pressure
on the free market with no effect on the bottomline of a city's budget is just
easy so I can see why they are doing it.

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fortran77
If "food desserts" really exist, and the market isn't solving the problem,
then the Government, working for the Citizens, should attempt to open a
grocery story in an afflicted neighborhood, to meet the perceived need. Think
of it as a jobs program.

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LocalH
The best way for a government to increase the health of its citizens is to ban
things like high fructose corn syrup, and provide incentives to those who
purchase healthier food. The buck doesn’t just stop at the dollar store
industry.

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sneak
Increasingly, I find bogus restrictions on what one can do with the land that
they own to be tyrannical.

Is there any real point to zoning other than coddling residential purchaser
future land values and de-risking their investment?

~~~
useragent86
Indeed. I's hard to imagine why an entrepreneur would risk investing in land
and building a business when a few years later the government might
artificially put him out of business with arbitrary restrictions.

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jmpman
EBT (food stamps) should be modified to only work for healthy food (however
one wants to describe that), and dollar stores will then offer that food.

~~~
whb07
Even if you signed up a ship to home large box of healthy food, you’re
delusional if they would divert their shitty food budget to it.

Everyone knows eating healthy and exercise is good for you. Yet few people do
it, to include the middle and upper classes.

~~~
jmpman
If they can’t but Doritos, maybe they’ll buy apples - is likely delusional.
They’ll likely buy flour, lard and sugar and make donuts.

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Havoc
Seems quite tone deaf.

Eating healthy is quite expensive - either in money or time/equipment.

It's not exactly a coincidence that poor students have a rep for Ramen
noodles.

~~~
interestica
Yeah, but then you can move onto the amazing fancy ramen. And it's not cheap.

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phendrenad2
Supermarkets sell the same snacks - so how will this help anything? Whoever
came up with this is highly out of touch with reality.

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RickJWagner
That's just a bad idea. The Nanny State cannot legislate people into making
the decisions they need to make.

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hurricanetc
What lengths we will go to blame anyone but ourselves.

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petagonoral
This just seems like a puff piece for Republican party values.

Not journalism. Not an opinion piece. An ad.

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loraa
Also poor people when given the chance will eat junk food. Many poor people
are not poor by chance but poor by stupidity.

