Dollar general does frequently have a high markup in poor communities without alternatives. It’s for lack of a better term poverty optimized which counterintuitively isn’t about the lowest cost per pound of flour etc.
The shrinkage rate may also contribute to this. In other words, the more goods that are stolen from the shelves, the higher the prices have to be on everything else in order to maintain sustainability.
In this way, shoplifting is essentially a tax on everyone else in your community.
If Dollar General is not in that neighborhood that has limited choice (or DG closes down/pulls out), is that community made better or worse? I think it's made worse.
Well if the choice is nothing or DG, of course everyone is going to pick DG. And you're right that's the choice many communities are facing. But it wouldn't take much tweaking at a policy level (civic, state, federal) to change that equation and bring business that actually support the community (jobs, high-nutrition and more local products, a venue for community building events, etc). The fact that the choice is DG or nothing is the problem, not DG itself.
What policy changes would "fix" the problem you're portraying? I see nothing simple, and definitely nothing that would just be a tweak to existing policies.
Well, i’m not in the local grocery business, but some avenues i would explore are:
tariffs on importing mostly single use soon-to-be-trash from china - something that would cut into their business model in a big way. Decent antitrust to prevent some of the monopolistic practices that mean DG and Walmart can get better deals from distributors. Requiring a livable wage for the one or two cashiers might be enough, honestly. I’m sure there are plenty of others i’m unaware of. The systems we have are what enable this business to exist, and make it hard for healthier (both in terms of food sold and their impact on communities) business to exist.
In my neighborhood at least, the closure of the only affordable grocery store led to a number of people selling produce on the street corner out of the back of pickup trucks. This is in the middle of a major city the US northeast.
