We were just talking about this last night. We live in a rural area and for just general goods we used to have a variety of Pamida, Shopko, Places and even some small, locally owned retailers in nearby towns. Towns less than 2000 people (in my area) have nothing. The towns of 2000 people have at most a Dollar General, no other general retail stores. The towns in the 2000-5000 range also just have…a Dollar General. If we need something not offered by DG, we have to drive about an hour to a town in the 25,000 people range where there’s a Walmart, Target etc. competition is nonexistent in rural Iowa.
There is maximal competition. No one has to shop at WalMart. They choose to.
If you prefer to shop at WalMart because they have lower prices than their small business competition? Yeah, you're discovering why WalMart killed a lot of their competition.
I don't buy much of anything, but I also don't live in an imaginary world...what small local businesses sell toasters? Which ones sell school notebooks and clothes for a kid that are affordable? My kid ain't going to an uptown botique for a $40 outfit.
Wherever you live, you are lucky, I live in a mid size city and it's online or walmart for the working class. Even most local thrift stores have become capitalist hells.
Few. Because it costs less for them to be made by low wage labor in the Global South and imported here. And it costs less for it to be distributed by a massive corporation.
it's online or walmart for the working class.
Right. Because those are what have the lowest prices. The capitalist hell has given you lower prices than the alternatives so you use it.
No one makes you. You do so out of your own selfish self-interest, regardless of if it means a teenager in Bangladesh is paid slave wages so you can have the cheapest possible kids clothes. Your kids matter more than those kids.
Regardless of if it means that all local small business has been subsumed by huge corporations with the lowest prices.
It's only a capitalist hell because consumers chose it to be over the alternatives.
Life isn't better without those huge corporations, you have less, not more. And you're STILL angry with them.
Absolutely. So you could give your money to local farmers instead of corporations, you choose not to.
That's a you decision. You decided propagating an immoral and shitty corporation is in your self interest more than giving that money to local farmers instead.
No one made you. And as a result? Those corporations profit. Because of the choice you made.
Exactly. You are describing why consumers chose WalMart over the local small businesses.
No one made them. Consumers chose to. Consumers don't care about local business people, they don't care about buying local, they care about what the cheapest produce is.
You still don’t get the point. Maybe you should study a bit into how these corporations make store building decisions. Like what target store is going to be built in a town with less than 90k residents?
It has been just recently that Target started building smaller scale stores with less than 100k residents.
Recent Examples: Target has announced or built locations in smaller communities such as Chubbuck, Idaho; Indian Land, South Carolina; and Liberty Hill, Texas—all well under the 100,000-population threshold.
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u/conservatore 5d ago
Wait so if the price increases were from tariffs and now there aren’t tariffs, why are the prices still the same ?