Dollar Store Nation

The US consumer saves $20.00 a week on "Dollar store" consumption. The US consumer uses that saved $20 to buy higher priced gas. The higher priced gas flows more profit to oil companies that it uses to explore for more oil needed for growing demand in China.

Paying more for gas and medicine creates a larger demand for discounted products in order to balance your budget. It might be that big retailers, big pharms and big energy realize this relationship and are making the best of it for their own good, not yours.

Products made in China and India will help build a taxable working class in those countries that will enable infrastruction construction.

Forcing Americans into the dollar store mentality will hasten the closure of US plants and speed the construction of roads and car dealers and retailers in China. The US market will be reduced to growing tobacco, cotton and corn. The confederate south is rising.


This is the new world order.

First of all it's clear that there is no overlord over the American Economy--there's no one person or group of persons pushing the buttons to make this happen.

Secondly, The American Economy is very diverse. I mean it is regrettiable to lose manufacturing jobs overseas, and we need to take steps to encourage companies to keep those jobs here. But lots of people aren't in manufacturing.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

I had to call Dell and Micro$haft to clear up a problem with my new Dell Notebook.

It was clear after the first sentance that they were based in India and english clearly wasn't something they understood very well.

This is my second Dell and clearly my last unless they change their support policies.

They are making a grave mistake. I remember calling once a few years back (middle of the night) and the young man (obviously bored) said that it really was a software problem but walked me through the mess and helped me solve my mistake. He is the reason that I bought another product from Dell but see no reason to do so now.

Some international outsourcing makes sense. My first encounters with it were for 24-hour server support, before the big push to outsource jobs to Asia.

I actually preferred the Aussie techs who picked up after 11 pm (Dell server support) as more knowledgeable, friendly, etc.

Approximately 1:00 PM EST to reach India...another call at approximately the same time reached a Dell Support Rep in Texas the next day.

The Dell rank-and-file isn't happy with this either and I have yet to talk with a Micro$haft Rep within the U.S.

If I'm paying for support, I expect support and from someone that understands the issues and the language I'm speaking...especially after paying 4K for a Notebook with a few accessories.

You got that right! "Lots of people arn't in manufacturing" Ever watch Micheal Moore's "Roger and Me"? 50 years ago Americans manufactured everything on the planet earth. International out sourcing didn't begin 2 weeks ago.

The point is, IMHO, that more Americans are being *forced* to buy necessities at the Dollar Store. That's a pretty sad commentary on how our already meager paychecks just aren't lasting long enough.

Like Ben Franklin, or any number of old stores from when I was a kid in the 70s. We had a local one called "Pro's". Old man Pro would follow every kid around the store because he thought that we'd steal from him. There's still a 5&10 store near my house in Warren named Bur-lers. The main difference between dollar stores and 5&10's is the Brach candy being sold in bulk form at the latter. Dollar stores are cheaper, too, these days.

Are there any Ben Franklin's left? K-Mart closed all the Kresge stores in the 80s, and Woolworth's also went out of business in that decade. How about Zayre or Grants? Or, in Pennsylvania, the Murphy stores?

are alive and well in northern michigan, but i haven't seen any in maryland.

by the time I was a kid, we just called them Dime Stores. :)

On edit: I know that there were McCrory's in Syracuse, NY and Harrisburg, PA as recently as five years ago.


On further edit: I cannot find much info on McCrory's on the web. I am guessing that they have gone belly up since I moved from Harrisburg four years ago.

My father owned a Ben Franklin-type 5&10. Even sold Brach's by the pound, and fabric by the yard (and cut window shades... know anywhere to get that done anymore?)

Walmart came, sold stuff cheaper than he could get it for awhile, and put him out of business in less than a year (after two generations -- 35+ years -- of running it).

Once he was gone, Walmart raised it's prices back up...

were also the people who looked after local civic affairs in your town, whereas the corporate types at Wal-Mart head office couldn't care less whether you have good libraries, safe drinking water, clean parks, etc. America gave up billions of dollars of civic life just to save 12 cents on a toothbrush.

And the town has changed as a result -- it wasn't just his business that got stomped by Walmart. Both local grocery stores closed when the big Cub foods superstore moved in. Local drug store: closed (it was the last one with a real 'fountain' in the county). Hardware store: nearly closed, on it's last legs (there's nowhere else to get things like plow parts).

It was as if everyone in the local 'JayCees' lost their businesses in the same year.

can hang in there for a few more years. The good news is that world oil production is peaking, and we are going to be forced to return to local economies.


James Howard Kunstler discussing oil peak & the future of suburbia...
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/INTERVIEWS/JAMES.HOWARD.KUNSTLER/

rather than the audio--to save time). That page also links to some other VERY interesting sites, especially

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/

which has dozens of lectures archived on peak oil and other energy issues.

So, thanks! And a belated welcome to DU :hi:

Sam Walton owned Ben Franklin franchises before he started Walmart.

material"

...though the corporation soldiers on, running among others TJMaxx.

I don't know if Aims is still around. They were like a low rent Walmart if that is possible. Anyone remember J. M. Fields?

I think they're still around, but still under Chapter 11 protection.

Marshall Fields disappeared maybe 20 years ago now. I had a school chum who went into corporate accounting, worked for Marshall Fields, and ended up helping with the liquidation. Every time I saw him in those days, he would announce proudly, "I'm working myself out of a job!" It was funny then.

He's got an interesting job now, auditing nuclear power plants. No, his children do not have gills: he just analyzes the books, and has nothing to do with the mechanics.

On edit: I wanted to introduce to this thread the concept of "cheap labor conservatives." I saw this on some blog, I can't remember whose, but the idea was that the one consistent policy outcome of this maladministration was to devalue the American worker. Very powerful article, and for those of us interested in economic justice I can't recommend enough that you Google the phrase "cheap labor conservatives" and read it.

though it is now owned by Dayton Hudson.

closed down. Bradley Store (similar to K-mart) had gone under earlier. So in my economically depressed town, there are zero stores like that (though there's one K-mart and one Wal-mart about 10 miles away. There are 2 rather dim and dumpy dollar stores on main street, one that opened only a year or so ago. People without cars or someone to drive them places are mostly out of luck even for grocery shopping. The elderly and disabled do have the option of asking for the Red Cross to add them to the list of people to take shopping or to the doctor, but anybody else simply MUST have a car if they want to eat. This is not a suburb, but an old ex-mfg town, and at the rate businesses are closing, etc. it's beginning to feel like a ghost town. Two of the 3 hardware stores have closed in the last 4 years--only the chain store remains.

I used to donate stuff to the Salvation Army or Goodwill or the hospital thrift store, but I've discovered that local people have organized a "swap shop" in a shed at the dump. Stuff left there can be taken for free by people that couldn't even afford to shop at the thrift stores. It's kept pretty neat, and seems to work well. And I know that there are people who find it a godsend--and it's possible to walk there from the poorer part of town (past all the closed-down factories and warehouses).

The true snobbery of american shopping can be seen at who shops at what discount store, picture if you will a pyramid of stores.
At the bottom are Dollar General and Family dollar, on the nxt level there are k marts, up a level you have Walmart. Go up to the next level and there are Target stores. At the top of the pyramid sits the old line department stores, JCPenney, Kohls, Gordman's etc..

There exists a hierarchy, the people who can shop at the top line department stores look down on the Target shoppers, who laugh at the Walmartians, that heckle the K marters, and everyone sneers at the Dollar shoppers.
They're all chasing the same dollars, but those dollars are increasingly being found in the pockets of the growing Chinese middle class.
If you've wondered where the mc has gone it's alive and well and growing in China.

but they are distributing the wealth of this nation to China, India and the rest of the third world. The rich will not suffer, they will still have their wealth, but he middle class will disappear.

I am all for helping the third world develope, but I want to bring them up to our level, not lower us to their level.

They're just transferring it source to overseas. Those of us who are not in the coupon-clipping class of true Capitalists (make you money off the market and not off a paycheck) are incidental to their program of capital growth.

Corporate American has renounced any real claim to be "American". Any business that relocates is HQ overseas, buys more than 50% of its product from overseas, etc. should be treated as a foreign company and 1) denined DoD and other government contracts and 2) taxes at a proportinately higher rate (including a national "value added" tax) to compensate for the economic, political, environmental, military, etc. costs associated with low-wage country production.

And vice-versa as well.

and closeout items. I have taken to buying my groceries here as you get an awesome deal. We also buy our medicine here. And for those who think it's outdated stuff, a true story: Bought bottle of Nyquil at Walgreen's at $6.99/expires: 8/04. Bought bottle of Nyquil at Big Lots $2.99/Expires 12/04. That proved it to me. If I ever get wealthier, I'll shop there. It's stupid not to.

I've never found anything with an expired date. Great prices and a wide variety of products.

There is some competitiveness in the US economy which drives prices down, which then results in more money in the pockets of American consumers. But if you look at the history of the Republican party, it's a history of finding where the middle class and working class has built up wealth, and then they take that wealth.

It used to be, 100 years ago, that all the wealth of the nation was in labor, so right wingers made sure they could steal that wealth by working people without paying them fair wages. Democrats changed that. Then, there was a lot of wealth built up in savings accounts, so we had the Republican-orchestrated savings and loan shift of wealth from middle class insured accounts of middle class savings to the pockets of the wealthy. Then the wealth of the middle class (after savings rates dropped to zero) was in 401(k)s, so we had the stock market bubble orchestrated by Republicans which shifted wealth from middle class retirement savings to the pockets of corporate insiders.

What's next? Well, lots of middle class people have dumped a lot of their savings into real estate, so you can probably expect a republican orchestrated transfer of that wealth to the pockets of their big donors. And then it's so obvious to me that they have planned another transfer of retirement savings to the pockets of the drug companies.

So the problem as I see it is that everytime the middle class creates a little wealth, there's a republican politician standing there figuring out a way to transfer that wealth to the pockets of already rich donors.

But the Manufacturing/Service sectors have been have been shipping jobs overseas at a record rate lately to maximize profit.

I'm 50 and have seen the pattern before; semiconductor manufacturing relocated to Asia in the '60's & '70's and drug companies given tax breaks to relocate off-shore under Regan.

What's next and more important: what are our current leaders setting us up for in the future? Didn't the British Empire have that problem until "the sun finally set?"

To get a lot of the land that used to be family farms gobbled up by agri-giants like ADM.
They inflated the value of the land, and then persuaded the farmers to use the land as collateral for FHA loans to modernize their farming operations. Once the farmers were sufficiently over-extended, the banks came back and said "Oops, we goofed- your land is worth a lot less than we told you it was, and now you don't have enough collateral to cover your loan- so we're calling in the loan(which we know you can't possibly pay) so that we can forclose on your farm, and sell it to ADM. It's basically a win-win situation- but not for you."

The Sam Shepherd/Jessica Lange movie, "Country" explains it pretty well.