Laura Williams uses the often-debunked tale of Marie Antoinette telling the poor of Paris to eat cake to illustrate a very real present-day issue of local governments trying to limit or even eliminate low-cost retail options in poor areas of their municipalities:
“Family Dollar Store” by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Sixty-two percent of adults surveyed by brand intelligence firm Morning Consult say Dollar Tree “has a positive effect on my community” (compared to 51 percent for Starbucks and 59 percent for Target).
People who can afford more choices — driving out to a big-box store, buying in bulk, ordering online, patronizing a farmer’s market — simply can’t see the perspective of someone for whom the dollar store is the most practical option.
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Opponents of dollar stores often contradict each other or even themselves.
Critics objected when suburban growth sent stores running for whiter, more affluent suburbs. But dollar stores’ explicit attempts to reverse this trend — to set up affordable retail options in poorer, underserved neighborhoods — are somehow also the target of scorn.
You’ll also hear critics claim dollar stores engage in “predatory” behavior by offering prices that are simultaneously too low (undercutting potential competitors) and also too high (as compared to a per-unit cost at the Costco 15 miles away).
Haters complain retail jobs offered by dollar stores are “low quality and low-wage” but also that dollar stores don’t create enough of these low-quality, undesirable jobs. One is reminded of the Woody Allen line complaining about a restaurant’s “terrible food … and such small portions!”
A Tulsa councilwoman begrudgingly confirmed that dollar retailers offer essentials like toothpaste and school supplies, bread and eggs, in areas where supermarkets “have consistently failed”. Why this is condemnable, rather than laudable, she does not explain.
With backward economic thinking, CNN claimed dollar stores “limit poor communities’ access to healthy food,” blaming low-cost retailers for the gaps they try to fill.
Bans on walkable, ultra-affordable stores do nothing to increase the availability of fresh food; they merely stamp out the only existing option.
