[HN Gopher] Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new s...
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Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard
Author : Krontab
Score : 173 points
Date : 2021-11-23 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
| 0des wrote:
| This was inevitable, but rather than maintain the status quo or
| even introducing shrinkflation, they should have made the jump to
| 2 dollars. 1.25 is maintenance, and effectively we are still
| getting what a dollar used to get. 2 dollars would get us a bit
| more time (inflation is not going to stop) and the ability to
| introduce a (relative) more premium product assortment. I only
| mention this premium product range because the dollar stores near
| me now sell things such as headphones and phone accessories.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Exactly right. Just like the US should get rid of all coins <
| $0.25.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| But then how would the coin suppliers stay in business?
| jvalencia wrote:
| Offer $5 & $10 coins
| 0des wrote:
| This isn't a Chuck E. Cheese, paper notes are just fine.
| Nobody asked "what about the guy who makes the yokes"
| when John Deere took his first spin.
| fanniemae wrote:
| Paper notes are extremely expensive to maintain because
| they can't stay in circulation long before they're worn
| out and need to be replaced.
|
| We really should be using $1, $2, $5 and $10 coins
| majou wrote:
| Canada's physical currency is pretty great:
|
| No penny; typical nickles, dimes, and quarters; loonies
| and toonies ($1 and $2 coins); as well as very durable
| and fancily-secured polymer bills for $5, $10, $20, $50,
| and $100.
|
| The only complaint might be that all the bills are the
| same size instead of on a log-scale like eu or aus, but I
| prefer it that way.
|
| I wouldn't see much value in coins >$2, bills are far
| simpler to carry and don't make noise or scratch screens.
| robocat wrote:
| I live in New Zealand which has NZ$1 and NZ$2 coins: they
| truely suck because the value is enough to care about but
| the coins don't fit well into your pocket. I also hate
| similar value coins in EUR, PS, AUD. $1 notes are
| awesome.
|
| 2 NZD ~= 1.40 USD.
|
| Note that NZ's smallest coin is 10 cents - it is good not
| having pennys nor nickels.
| 0des wrote:
| Paper and linen are renewable materials that are made
| from easy low-impact resources to be extracted and
| processed, they can be remade and reissued many times for
| a fraction of the impact of a metal coin, not to mention
| the cost to transport any amount over pocket change.
| hanniabu wrote:
| And they're more convenient for the wallet
| ryanmercer wrote:
| And I've never lost a paper bill, but I'm forever losing
| change.
| jyounker wrote:
| There is very little in the world that is more recyclable
| than metal.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The GAO actually did a study on this in 2019! They
| determined that for the first time since they started
| tracking the issue this is not true. Paper bills are
| overall cheaper than coinage now. I can't link right now
| but it's GAO report # GAO-19-300
| asdff wrote:
| This is America. Tons of industries exist because they
| became outmoded but instead lobbied for protective
| legislation to ensure that what happened to all the
| horseshoe makers and stable owners won't ever happen to
| their industry, like car what dealers have done to make
| sure Ford has to sell their cars through these sleezeball
| third parties.
| officeplant wrote:
| Other countries saved money by getting ride of low
| denomination coins and swapping the highest used paper
| currencies to coin because it typically lasts longer.
|
| Although recent studies have shown that since we finally
| improved paper currency's sturdiness the $1 bill is
| lasting long enough now to be worth keeping around.[1]
|
| [1]https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-19-300
| kube-system wrote:
| The "worth" of money is more than just the durability of
| the physical material. The #1 most important factor is
| its use in facilitating trade. We've introduced multiple
| Dollar coins into general circulation in the US and
| they've always failed because people culturally don't
| like using them, and businesses don't like wasting money
| accepting them.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| All the zinc that goes into pennies is worth $9 million per
| year, based on a back of the envelope calculation. Last
| year, zinc suppliers/miners sold $17.3 billion of the
| metal, and will do even more this year.
|
| $9 million is less than a rounding error there.
| [deleted]
| gkoberger wrote:
| I think you're thinking of this from the wrong perspective. To
| me, an extra 75 cents don't really matter. I'd pay it without
| blinking.
|
| But to many people in the US, going from $1 to $2 would
| literally double their expenses for the month and hurt an
| already tight budget.
|
| "Kyle Dishman can't afford to shop at the local grocery store
| anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General, where he can make
| $40 stretch into a week's worth of groceries and the occasional
| can of motor oil for his Chrysler 300."
|
| If you went from $1 to $2, all of a sudden Kyle only gets to
| eat every other day. _Half_ of all shoppers in the US buy
| groceries from a dollar store, and they aren 't doing it
| because the Dollar General has the freshest produce in the
| area.
|
| Sources:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/20/growing-n...
|
| https://www.mashed.com/224027/think-twice-before-buying-food...
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't have to eat twice as much because the unit price
| doubled. I'm pretty sure the suggestion wasn't intended to
| mean that they should sell the same amount of product for $2
| as they now do for $1.
| mmaurizi wrote:
| Are you aware that Dollar Tree and Dollar General are
| different stores with different business models?
|
| Dollar General does not price all their items for $1. I don't
| believe they ever have.
|
| And Dollar Tree does not sell groceries (at least not any
| I've ever been to).
| kube-system wrote:
| Dollar Tree sells nonperishable and frozen-foods.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Dollar Tree doesn't sell fresh groceries, but they
| certainly sell food.
|
| https://www.nogettingoffthistrain.com/shopping/dollar-
| tree-g...
|
| But even if you ignore food, the point applies to all sorts
| of things (cosmetics, clothing, pharmacy, etc) people go to
| both for at a low price point.
| kbelder wrote:
| >And Dollar Tree does not sell groceries (at least not any
| I've ever been to).
|
| May be regional, because all of them around here do. At
| least canned/dry goods and frozen foods. Teeny-tiny steaks.
| No fresh produce, obviously.
| tombert wrote:
| > This was inevitable, but rather than maintain the status quo
| or even introducing shrinkflation, they should have made the
| jump to 2 dollars.
|
| Yeah, there's Five Below, where everything is $5 or less, and
| the quality of the stuff that they supply is substantially
| higher quality, and as a result I find it more fun to walk
| around there nowadays than Dollar Tree.
| 0des wrote:
| Not to take it too far off-topic but Five Below's
| wordmark/logo is deeply unsettling.
| qq4 wrote:
| > deeply unsettling
|
| Care to elaborate? What about the logo makes you feel this
| way?
| ruined wrote:
| it's those beady little degs
| jandrese wrote:
| For the longest time I thought it was a winter coat
| store. It wasn't until I saw beach balls out front one
| day that I gave them a second look.
| kergonath wrote:
| To me, it's more that lower-case f.
| 0des wrote:
| Bingo.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That's just keyboard elitism. You wouldn't be so bothered
| by them if they had a proper shift-key/fn-key press.
| Maybe you should step outside of your ASCII bubble an
| realize there's a whole world of Unicode to explore that
| can't be encompassed by a double key-stroke.
| benatkin wrote:
| The degree symbol is what drew me to the brand in the
| first place. It made it sound clever and novel. They
| might not need it anymore but I think it helped them
| become popular.
| zwieback wrote:
| Ah, so I was wrong. I've been watching how much cooler things at
| the Dollar Tree were getting and predicted that eventually I'll
| buy my next car there. I guess I was wrong...
|
| If they bump up the price of those fruity Tootsie Rolls I'll cry.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Along these line why is the US still minting pennies? At some
| point we could just start rounding to the nearest nickel (or
| dime).
|
| Also, why is gas always ab extra 9/10 of a penny? Reminds me of
| paying 3123 RON for a Big Mac in Romania -- that last digit is
| just noise at the consumer level.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The optics of eliminating the penny during inflation are really
| bad. The optics would be honest but politically bad. Maybe the
| next time we have a booming economy and high consumer
| confidence, we can make pennies seem tacky and get rid of them
| that way.
| 4monthsaway wrote:
| That's worth at least a penny for your thoughts
| waynecochran wrote:
| My thoughts are worth only a monatary rounding error I
| guess...
| jdofaz wrote:
| >Also, why is gas always ab extra 9/10 of a penny
|
| Others have replied to the why, but it is technically 9 Mills.
| The thousandths unit was established in the Coinage Act of 1792
| as the smallest unit of the dollar.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#United_States
|
| This is some useless trivia that I know for some reason :)
| MattRix wrote:
| We stopped minting pennies here in Canada in 2012. Pennies are
| still legal tender, but cash purchases are rounded to the
| nearest 5 cents. I don't think anyone here misses the pennies.
| asdff wrote:
| See that's the thing. If we didn't have pennies, companies
| couldn't ask their customers to fund as much of their tax
| writeoff every year when they ask them to round up for some
| random cause.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > why is gas always ab extra 9/10 of a penny
|
| Same reason things are $.99, $19.95, $299.99 instead of $1.00,
| $20.00, $300.00.
|
| In the US, there's many places that have 2 or 3 gas stations in
| near vicinity and price competition is fierce. So the $0.01
| matters, people will drive to the gas station down the block to
| save that penny per gallon.
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| It's a bit of the "look, it's not the next unit up," but it's
| also a bit of a tongue in cheek "this last 9/10th of a cent
| is the government collecting tax." It's no longer _really_
| true, since taxes make up much more than 1 cent of the cost
| of fuel, but it 's stuck around as a reminder anyway.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If it is 9/10 of a penny, then it is $0.001 per gallon.
| Fueling a 20 gallon tank is $0.02.
| csa wrote:
| > If it is 9/10 of a penny, then it is $0.001 per gallon.
| Fueling a 20 gallon tank is $0.02.
|
| ... and some people will drive down the block for those 2
| cents, even though they may not realize that it's only 2
| cents. It's just "cheaper" to them.
| yks wrote:
| I dunno, usually it's 2 "upscale chain brand" gas stations
| with identical high prices and 1 "local brand" gas station
| nearby with significantly cheaper gas. I don't understand how
| competition works in the gas station business but $0.01
| difference clearly does not matter.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Gas prices are quoted to fractions of a penny and then
| rounded to the nearest cent when a card is swiped. For people
| paying with cash, rounding to the nearest ten cents isn't
| that much of a leap.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's a problem if it's always rounding up. Throwing away
| the penny also requires legislation enforcing round to
| nearest.
| jaspax wrote:
| Buddy, there's no way you paid 3123 RON for a Big Mac, since
| that's approximately 750 dollars. You probably paid 3123 ROL
| (the old currency before it was redenominated circa 2005).
|
| (You are correct that amounts below 100 ROL were totally
| meaningless.)
| kingcharles wrote:
| In Communist Romania, Big Mac cost more than child.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why is the US still minting pennies?_
|
| A lobbying group funded by the producer of the blanks used to
| make pennies opposes penny abolition [1]. There is no
| similarly-motivated group promoting it. (Citizens to Retire the
| Penny exists, but their last news item is from 2019 [2].)
|
| When the U.S. eliminated the half cent it was worth 14 cents
| [3], so there is a good case of nixing the nickel alongside the
| penny, whenever we get around to it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents
|
| [2] http://www.retirethepenny.org
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Sta...
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > _why is the US still minting pennies?_
|
| > > _A lobbying group..._
|
| It is astonishing how many problems in this country start
| with those three words.
| spicybright wrote:
| Not to mention other countries have done this with little
| issue.
| [deleted]
| jyounker wrote:
| This is a good long-term argument for nationalizing money
| production.
| janitor61 wrote:
| If they were going to change anything, it would be likely to
| get rid of both the penny and nickel and use 1 decimal place
| for prices; the current US nickel already has a melt price/
| face value of 124% currently (https://www.coinflation.com/),
| which is never a good thing
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They should abolish coins. There is probably less need for them
| (who wants to carry them!) now the technology to accept notes
| in machines.
|
| Maybe the people who make the note readers can lobby to abolish
| coins.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I have to wash my clothes at the laundromat. Get annoyed
| every time I have to shovel $6 of quarters into the machine,
| one-at-a-time.
| asdff wrote:
| I've asked my landlord if they would let me buy back the
| quarters from them since it's such a pain getting them in a
| coin shortage. They didn't respond. Rent is already in the
| thousands, really my landlord should just stomach the $8
| they get off me from the laundry room a month and just make
| it free. I'd honestly pay my landlord even higher rent if I
| didn't have to deal with getting rolls of quarters.
| nopassrecover wrote:
| Tangential but I find it interesting that as a general
| rule US apartment tenants don't have a washer/dryer eg as
| a front-loader combo.
|
| I gather from research online it comes back to the
| practice of generally renting furnished apartments, a
| preference for wood building construction, a practice of
| having non-water-proofed wet areas, historical custom
| (perhaps coinciding with apartments being constructed
| post-war when these appliances were large and highly
| expensive?), and the chicken-and-egg problem of there not
| being a market for smaller appliances and therefore there
| not being great supply of smaller appliances.
| [deleted]
| bruceb wrote:
| The thinking might be that when word gets out, people let
| their friends come do their laundry for free.
| [deleted]
| jyounker wrote:
| The simple solution is minting larger value coins.
| luke2m wrote:
| https://gizmodo.com/why-gas-is-priced-in-tenths-of-cents-169...
| > that last digit is just noise at the consumer level. That's
| exactly the point.
| tyingq wrote:
| I suppose their employees would then be justified asking for a
| 25% raise?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| they can be justified all they want
| tyingq wrote:
| I assume you're aware these types of employers are already
| having problems hiring and retaining.
| syshum wrote:
| Pretty sure just about all types of employers in the US are
| having problems hiring and retaining employee's right now.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| This is Dollar Tree. They are known for only hiring part time
| to the tune of ~15-20 hours a week so they don't have to pay
| any benefits. (At least they are here in Fort Smith, AR. It may
| be a local manager policy.)
| willcipriano wrote:
| Anyone who hasn't gotten a raise in the past year should get at
| least 6.2%, unless their employer is signaling to them that
| they value their contributions 6.2% less than last year. If you
| improved your skills at all, or took on additional
| responsibilities due to Covid 25% isn't at all a stretch,
| especially at dollar store wages.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > unless their employer is signaling to them that they value
| their contributions 6.2% less than last year
|
| Not getting a raise doesn't mean your employer necessarily
| values you less - it could just mean others value you less so
| your employer has less competition for you.
|
| Supply and demand. If nobody's buying hammers and the price
| of hammers goes down, that doesn't mean the value my hammer
| brings me has gone down, but if I need to buy a new hammer I
| pay less.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Last year hammers cost $5, this year it's $4. Go to a
| jobsite and ask a guy what his hammer is worth and last
| year he would say $5, this year he says $4. He's not making
| a value judgment based on anything intrinsic about the
| hammer, it's just worth less due to the cost of replacement
| falling. He literally values it less.
|
| Humans, unlike hammers can decide to train to become a
| screwdriver or change from Binford Tools to Craftsman, who
| may value low turnover more than Binford and thus pay more
| to retain employees.
|
| If the management or ultimate customers of your industry or
| firm don't support paying you a wage that keeps up with the
| CPI, I suggest working hard to find better managers and
| customers. You are fighting a losing battle otherwise.
| There is a ton of demand out there right now for almost
| everything.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > don't support paying you a wage that keeps up with
| inflation
|
| Your employer doesn't care what inflation is. They care
| about what they have to pay on the market to get you, and
| they care what you produce.
|
| Going to them and talking about inflation is making an
| irrelevant argument. Inflation isn't part of the equation
| that determines how much they pay you. Tell them your
| market value, and tell then your productivity. But
| talking about inflation is just going to illicit a 'so
| what?'
| willcipriano wrote:
| If a business is unable to grow at a rate that is faster
| than inflation, that would mean it's shrinking in real
| terms. Why am I sticking around in a firm that is
| shrinking dramatically? Either the industry is dying or
| the business is being poorly managed. Working longer
| hours and throwing additional value on that fire doesn't
| seem like a great plan. You are probably better off
| spending your effort looking for a new job and lately
| you'll end up with more then 6% to show for it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > If a business is unable to grow at a rate that is
| faster than inflation, that would mean it's shrinking in
| real terms.
|
| But - again - you aren't paid a salary based on how well
| the business is doing. When a company's profits double do
| you think they double everyone's salaries? Of course not
| - surely you know that? You're paid based on what the
| market for you is, and what you produce and how valuable
| it is to the company.
|
| Like inflation, the size of the business isn't part of
| that equation.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The business isn't doing any better if it grew by 6.2%
| this year, the currency they are receiving and paying you
| with has reduced in value by 6.2%, so it is breaking
| even. I'm not saying this in a "capitalism is bad" sort
| of way, I'm saying this in a "capitalism is good" sort of
| way. Wages are up in the majority of sectors,
| unemployment is falling, if your company or industry
| can't do 6% this year you likely have other options that
| can. Use at will employment to your advantage.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > if your company or industry can't do 6% this year you
| likely have other options that can
|
| That's the right argument to make. Not inflation as you
| were saying before.
|
| Talking about inflation to motivate pay rise is a
| logically unsound argument.
|
| 'Inflation is up 2%' - so what?
|
| 'I can get 2% elsewhere' ok we can talk.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Yeah I'm not certain where we disagree. I mainly reject
| the assertion that I may have misread, that workers
| should deliver additional value beyond what they are
| currently delivering in order to earn a raise. The
| currency has less value then last year and this is
| reflected in wages in aggregate. If you want to retain
| people, you'll need to keep up otherwise you should
| anticipate high turnover.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Anyone who hasn't gotten a raise in the past year should get
| at least 6.2%, unless their employer is signaling to them
| that they value their contributions 6.2% less than last year.
|
| Fruits and vegetables are very nutritious, but the price I
| pay for them has little bearing on their value to me. I would
| easily pay double or triple or even more. But I do not
| because a different fruit and vegetable seller is willing to
| sell them for less.
|
| Similarly, it is possible for the supply and demand curves to
| move in a manner that makes the price of certain types of
| labor not increase or even decrease compared to price
| increases of other types of labor.
|
| For example, labor where you can sit safely inside a home
| behind a computer screen rather than deal with sick people
| with contagious infections.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a free country, anyone is justified to ask for any raise
| anytime they want.
| goldenkey wrote:
| It is a free forum, we can post the most obvious insights
| anytime we want.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My tongue-in-cheek point is that no one should wait for
| their employer to raise the price of the goods or services
| they are selling to ask for a raise, because there is no
| justification needed other than doing what you want to do,
| which includes selling your labor to a different employer
| for a higher price.
| nickff wrote:
| But not snark, according to the HN guidelines:
|
| > _" Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community. "_
| goldenkey wrote:
| I'm simply stating a fact about the forum in the same
| spirit of parent's comment about our country. Any snark
| you detect is your implicit bias.
| nickff wrote:
| I am quite certain that your previous comment in this
| thread is correctly classified as snark:
|
| > _" critical or mocking comments made in an indirect or
| sarcastic way."_
|
| These kinds of comments are turning HN into Reddit.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Not if they're raising prices because salaries have already
| increased.
| smt88 wrote:
| Not much is still a dollar there, and they use that gimmick to
| charge people more than other stores anyway[1].
|
| 1. https://boingboing.net/2021/08/17/this-chart-reveals-that-
| do...
| abeppu wrote:
| But also as you shrink stuff, the proportion of it that goes to
| packaging increases, right? Like, even if you aren't trying to
| trick people, smaller containers of stuff perhaps should be
| more expensive per unit net weight. If you go to a normal
| retailer that sells multiple sizes of the same product (dish
| soap, tooth paste, whatever), the larger size will typically be
| cheaper per oz basis.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| This isn't a very good comparison. It singles out certain
| products that are probably the worst deals in the store. I am a
| very value contentious person and there's so many things that
| are great values at Dollar Tree. To name a few:
|
| 1. Dishwasher pods 10/$1.00. The best deal I've found anywhere.
| 2. Seeds packs 4/$1.00 - local hardware store sells the same
| seeds for $1 a pack. 3. Office supplies - 10 packs of ballpoint
| pens, 8 packs of steno-sized paper pads clipboards, poster
| board, foam core 4. Pasta and beans are cheaper than most of
| the grocery stores around here. 5. Kosher salt and other spices
| 6. CA (superglue) in various bottles add pack sizes. 7. 100%
| cotton t-shirts 8. Mylar balloons and other party supplies 9.
| Ziplock bags, sandwich baggies, etc. 10. There's often random
| bulk buys that get orders of some name brand thing in that's a
| really good price ($1 for a $5 or $10 item, for example).
| ajb wrote:
| Tangentially related, I always find these stores amusing:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5521128,0.0516247,3a,75y,157...
|
| For those who don't want to click on the link: There is a store
| called "99p Plus Extra", and 3 doors down is another one called
| "98p Plus Extra".
|
| It would be interesting to know whether they both started as
| pound stores.
| nayuki wrote:
| It looks like The Simpsons parodied real life:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2tv_CGuVPM ;
| https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Thirty_Minutes_Over_Tokyo
| pengaru wrote:
| Loosely related anecdote:
|
| For the past ~two months the IKEA nearest to me (Covina, CA) has
| been constantly out of stock for a table [0] I'd wanted, priced
| at $199.
|
| Earlier this month I received a notification of it being in
| stock. That afternoon I made the trip to go pick one up, out of
| stock, shelves largely barren. Asked staff WTF? They'd received
| _one_ and it was immediately sold.
|
| Still out of stock at that location today, but now when I check
| the site it's $229 (+15%), yay.
|
| [0] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/norden-gateleg-table-
| birch-9042...
| mongol wrote:
| I read elsewhere that IKEA have huge supply chain problems.
| Perhaps related to the container shortage that was recently
| discussed here. Googling found me this:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/14/ikea-warns-supply-chain-disr...
| wwalexander wrote:
| Yeah, there's three or four items I've been meaning to buy
| for about half a year that haven't come back. Sometimes I'll
| get the stock notification but it will disappear quickly, and
| they don't let you place pickup orders for items with less
| than 5 units in stock.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Been a couple years since I've stepped foot in a Dollar Tree, but
| by and large I don't recall very many things actually still being
| under a dollar, except maybe candy?
| kumarsw wrote:
| That's Family Dollar and Dollar General. Dollar Tree is/was the
| "true" remaining dollar store.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Along with 99 cent only.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Do Canadians have Toonie Town stores?
| fortran77 wrote:
| I know the UK has "Poundland" from watching Big Clive videos.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| We have Dollarama
| waynecochran wrote:
| Pregnancy tests still a dollar? I went to dollar tree a lot when
| I was first married...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Pregnancy tests are like $0.25/each if you buy the cheap strips
| in bulk:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/AccuMed-Pregnancy-25-Count-Individual...
| tmaly wrote:
| I am always reminded of that song by Adam Sandler: Toll Booth
| Willie
| gkoberger wrote:
| I don't think that people in this thread appreciate how prevalent
| grocery shopping in dollar stores is. In the US, half of shoppers
| buy groceries from a dollar store. They do it because it's
| literally all they can afford anything else. There are more
| dollar stores than Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald's combined.
|
| "Kyle Dishman can't afford to shop at the local grocery store
| anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General, where he can make $40
| stretch into a week's worth of groceries and the occasional can
| of motor oil for his Chrysler 300."
|
| Sources:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/20/growing-n...
|
| https://www.mashed.com/224027/think-twice-before-buying-food...
|
| EDIT: Of course not all things cost $1, but it's certainly
| weighted in that direction. You don't go to a dollar store for
| nice things; you do it because it's the only option for you. A
| lot of the responses seem to want to debate how poor people are
| making choices, and I think that misses the point.
| tantalor wrote:
| Dollar General is not a "dollar store"
|
| > Even though Dollar General has the word "dollar" in its name,
| everything in the store doesn't go for a buck; their
| merchandise is just low priced.
|
| https://www.rd.com/article/dollar-tree-vs-dollar-general/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They do it because it's literally all they can afford
| anything else.
|
| Dollar stores very often aren't cheaper than other sources for
| similar products _especially_ for grocery items (which they
| tend to have very limited selections of.)
|
| People that shop for groceries at dollar stores do it because:
|
| 1. They shop for other things at dollar stores (either for
| price, or for reason #2, or because its the only place close by
| that carries the type of thing involved) and getting groceries
| there saves a trip,
|
| 2. Reputation for price without actual comparison,
|
| 3. Lack of actual grocery stores conveniently located,
|
| Your own second article notes the relatively _high_ prices (as
| well as quality issues) of dollar store groceries.
| goostavos wrote:
| Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt
| poor. It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise
| literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay
| more money for less product at the dollar store than
| elsewhere.
|
| Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price
| tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!"
|
| If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and
| stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money now
| versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful thing
| is going to leave you destitute. There's a fair amount of
| conflicting and complex psychology going on in that shopping
| decision beyond not just knowing that they should comparison
| shop.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Your first sentence sums up the majority of this site on
| any socioeconomic issue. At this point the term "financial
| literacy" is exclusively used by armchair poverty
| quarterbacks.
| kgwxd wrote:
| > armchair poverty quarterbacks
|
| HA! I'm picturing the kid that owned the football and
| would threaten to take it home if he didn't get to be
| quarterback :)
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I have been dirt poor most of my life. And I can tell you I
| was careful about where I shopped.
|
| And many other poor people I knew _blew_ tons of money on
| McDonald's because "they couldn't afford to cook"
|
| It's not so cut and dry.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been
| dirt poor.
|
| I've been dirt poor; I've never been in a situation where
| "dollar store as regular grocery source" made sense (though
| I've shopped in dollar stores, and occasionally when I did
| found deals on grocery items that were worthwhile), and I
| am very much aware of why that was never the case for me
| and why it is and was sometimes for other people.
|
| Also, not all people who shop at dollar stores are dirt
| poor.
|
| > It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise
| literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay
| more money for less product at the dollar store than
| elsewhere.
|
| Actually, it would probably suprise some of them. Believe
| it or not, poorly informed poor people _do_ exist. The idea
| that they don 't is as misguided as the idea that all poor
| people are poorly informed.
|
| > Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at
| price tags in different stores
|
| Not really, when reason #3 ("Lack of actual grocery stores
| conveniently located") applies. Comparison shopping takes
| time and effort that is something of a luxury in the best
| of cases, but it also takes _having alternatives in the
| first place_.
|
| > If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and
| stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money
| now versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful
| thing is going to leave you destitute.
|
| That's true, but it doesn't contradict anything I said.
| It's like you have a canned rant about poor people that you
| arr trotting out independent of its actual relevance to the
| discussion.
|
| > There's a fair amount of conflicting and complex
| psychology going on in that shopping decision beyond not
| just knowing that they should comparison shop.
|
| Which would perhaps be an insightful counterargument if I
| had said something even approximately like "poor people who
| shop at dollar stores do it because they don't realize they
| should comparison shop". Of the three reasons I gave for
| people shopping at dollar stores, only one relates to a
| failure to understand the price realities, and I never
| suggested that one was particularly common among the poor.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Dollar stores very often aren't cheaper than other sources
| for similar products especially for grocery items (which they
| tend to have very limited selections of.)
|
| This isn't true for many of the core staple items sold by
| traditional retail and dollar channels. There are many
| identical or equivalent products that are sold at
| significantly lower price points.
|
| I know this because I've literally read product
| cannibalization reports the retailers produce to quantify the
| margin loss associated with sales via the dollar channel.
| Digory wrote:
| > People that shop for groceries at dollar stores do it
| because:
|
| 4. They only have a dollar.
|
| Yes, it's cheaper by the fluid ounce to buy a barrel of Pine-
| sol at Costco. But if you have $100 for groceries and
| household expenses this week, you'll pay more per ounce to
| minimize the cash-flow problem.
|
| Their cash-flow constraints and cost of credit both prevent
| them from economizing. _That is how most Americans shop._
| javagram wrote:
| $100 is plenty to afford groceries at a grocery store. If
| they only had $4 or something your point would make more
| sense.
|
| You can take $30 to a grocery store and walk out with a
| decent quantity of rice and beans, at good prices per
| ounce.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| There's also the time cost and, in the case of Costco,
| membership cost. Plus the general lack of knowledge of
| all of the above.
|
| With $100 perhaps I could walk into Costco and get huge
| quantities of maybe 1/4 of what I need in a given week,
| and because I bought it at Costco instead of Dollar Tree
| those items will last me two months instead of a week.
| But now I have to go to Dollar Tree anyway and that's
| hard because I work 6 days a week and Costco is really
| far away because I live in a rural town where even a
| Walmart is at least 20 minutes away.
|
| It's of course smarter to take the 20 minute drive to
| Walmart and save even there, but if I'm rural and
| uneducated I probably don't know that and assume that the
| per unit price at Dollar Tree is roughly the same as
| Walmart.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm not sure where "poor people should subsist on only
| rice and beans" became a valid idea. Sure, I mean, it's a
| cheap meal. But it's also boring and soulcrushing to have
| everyday.
|
| You're also aside the fact that rice and beans takes a
| good amount of time to prepare, which is a problem if
| you're working 16 hours a day - making rice takes 30
| minutes and that is coming out of your sleep.
|
| But most importantly, only having $4 at a time _is_ how a
| lot of poor people have to shop. They have $4 today.
| Maybe they have $4 every work day as a day laborer. But
| they don 't necessarily have $100 at the start of the
| week to plan everything out.
| ingenieros wrote:
| "But it's also boring and soulcrushing to have everyday"
| It's also rich in vegetable protein and a great source of
| fiber. Geez, when I think of "boring and soulcrushing"
| meals I think of SOYLENT not a nutritious meal enjoyed by
| tens of millions across LATAM on a daily basis.
| vore wrote:
| Just plain rice and plain beans every day? I think there
| is a lot of work that goes into preparation you're
| willfully ignoring for in making it less boring and
| soulcrushing.
| bserge wrote:
| Probably because they're cheap food calories and
| nutrition wise.
|
| But you definitely need a lot of extra shit to make them
| taste good, and especially taste _different_ every now
| and then.
|
| Beans can be baked, fried, boiled, turned into paste. But
| they'll taste 10x better with at least mayo and ketchup,
| and rather lots of it.
|
| At the end of the day, a frozen pizza or a discount big
| burger is only 30 cent more if you eat it throughout the
| day, and it _tastes_ good.
|
| 30 cents is something you can find on the ground and few
| will bother picking up. That's how poor the poor are in
| "developed countries".
|
| In Germany, people rifling through trash for bottles/cans
| is a common sight, and many would think "you can do much
| better than 25 cent per 5-10 minutes".
|
| But no, that's how poor the poor are. And 90% of people
| on this site are out of touch with that reality.
| healsdata wrote:
| They may not have the space for a barrel of Pine-sol
| either.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yes, it's cheaper by the fluid ounce to buy a barrel of
| Pine-sol at Costco.
|
| Its frequently cheaper _to buy the same size package_ of a
| grocery item at a traditional grocery store than a dollar
| store; I 've seen cases as extreme as things that regularly
| go 4/$1 (and occasionally go on sale at 10/$1) at regular
| grocery stores going for 1/$1 at a dollar store.
|
| But if you don't have a regular grocery store in convenient
| distance (walking/biking distance if you don't have working
| car!), that doesn't matter. (Costco and similar stores
| present another level of problem; they tend to both be more
| distant for most people than even standard grocery stores
| and to bias toward larger package sizes--aside from whether
| you can afford to tie up money in the larger item even with
| a smaller unit cost, _storage space_ becomes a problem.)
| Osiris wrote:
| This is my experience with Dollar General when on trips and
| stopping for cheap snacks. Only the no brand generic items
| are cheap. Name brand items are not.
|
| Dollar Tree, on the other hand, every item is a dollar and
| it's possible to get cheap cereal and other groceries but
| many small things like candy are more expensive.
| cheriot wrote:
| In addition, there's people that run out of money at the end
| of the month and need smaller size packages even if the per
| unit cost is higher.
| tsol wrote:
| >Dollar stores very often aren't cheaper than other sources
| for similar products especially for grocery items (which they
| tend to have very limited selections of.)
|
| Some products are. Especially the unhealthy-- candy and soda
| is cheaper. I used to get bread there, they'd have the same
| bread as nicer stores just closer to the 'best by' date. But
| it tasted fine to me. I would get dishes and cups,
| silverware, and socks. Are ended up being cheaper than even
| Walmart. It can be cost effective even if you have other
| options
| vianneychevalie wrote:
| How often do you need to buy dishes, cups and socks?
| heartbreak wrote:
| "Buy once cry once" only works when you have money. If
| all you can afford are dollar store socks, you're going
| to be buying a lot of dollar store socks. Being poor
| sucks.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Of course dollar store socks don't last as long as nicer
| ones but (I haven't run the numbers) they may very well
| still be the cheapest (or damn close) on a per day of use
| basis.
|
| The cheapest things being the most cost effective
| uncommon for goods that are consumable due to long term
| wear and tear. You need to actually run the analysis for
| any given class of product.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Everytime you get evicted and the landlord throws your
| stuff on the curb
| gamechangr wrote:
| When I was a college student I priced Walmart and the dollar
| store on over one hundred items. My experience was that the
| dollar store was indeed cheaper than other sources.
|
| I did notice that some of the products (like deodorant)
| typically "the sell by" date was much faster, but that wasn't
| a deterrent to me at the time.
|
| I bought from the Dollar Store exclusively for 3 years for
| two reasons : 1) It was cheaper 2) the closest competitive
| store was 20 miles away
| MrFoof wrote:
| _> Dollar stores very often aren't cheaper than other sources
| for similar products especially for grocery items (which they
| tend to have very limited selections of.)_
|
| Yep. They're usually not competitive on unit price. In areas
| that aren't shopping deserts, they cater to folks who can't
| afford to fill their car's gas tank on a whim -- they need X,
| they need it today, so they'll get what they can today. "It's
| expensive to be poor."
|
| What I've found them good for is stuff I use super sparingly,
| and odd items. For example, envelopes. A box of 20 for $1
| isn't great per unit, but it takes me FIVE YEARS to go
| through that box that takes up less space than a larger one,
| so still a win. Toothbrush for $1 is hard to argue. Gift bags
| and greeting cards are a fraction of where you easily find
| them elsewhere. If I'm out and really need a drink, if it's
| the closest option I may get a diet soda or a bottle of
| water.
|
| I rarely go to one, but I'll go through one periodically to
| observe what's there and make a mental note of the few things
| that are the obvious deal given my situation.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > "It's expensive to be poor."
|
| This is a talking point I wish more people on HN
| understood.
|
| Can't afford a dental cavity filling? It becomes a root
| canal next year. Maybe you'll settle on just a simple
| extraction, and now you're down a tooth with no hope of
| ever affording a dental bridge, let alone an implant.
|
| Can't afford to get a lump checked out? Three years later,
| you're unable to afford the stage 3 cancer treatment.
|
| Buying the massive 30-roll pack of toilet paper from Costco
| for $15 is cheaper than buying 6-packs for $5, but you only
| have $20 to last the week, and you gotta buy food, too.
| jandrese wrote:
| The big problem with this is that Dollar Stores generally don't
| have a produce section. Everything is in a box, bag, or can.
| This is not healthy. $40/week for a single person isn't an easy
| food budget, but I think could manage that at my grocery store.
| It's $5.71 per day for three meals. You really need to optimize
| for calories. Pasta, dried beans, potatoes, not much meat or
| dairy, even produce is a bit of a luxury. This is the kind of
| budget that puts those "just drink one less Starbucks coffee a
| day" comments into perspective. And forget about eating out,
| even a single fast food meal would blow your entire budget for
| the day. This becomes a very serious challenge if he's trying
| to feed a family of 4 on that budget.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Completely off topic but as someone who had to do something
| equivalent in an European country you can eat well for less
| than 40$ a week if you know how to cook.
|
| Buying a whole chicken is far less expensive that buying cuts
| and is a cheap source of meat. You can make good stock from
| the bones. Vegetables at the end of their shelf life are
| often substantially marked down and you can often freeze what
| you cook with them (sauce and curry for exemple). Rice is
| very cheap, polenta too. Fresh pasta are easy to make and
| delicious as are homemade tortillas. Eggs are only 16c a
| piece. Fresh garlic and ginger are not too expensive and with
| a small selection of spices and soy sauce they will go a long
| way in making things better. Then, you can somewhat easily
| grow basil, parsley, thymes and cilantro on a window sill.
|
| Olive oil and butter were the only expensive product I used
| to buy but a little goes a long way.
| Jach wrote:
| Everything may be in a box, bag, or can (perhaps even
| frozen!) but that doesn't mean it's not healthy. Nor does
| availability of produce mean a particular individual is going
| to buy a (presumably healthy?) sack of apples over that
| (presumably unhealthy?) super sugary apple juice, or box of
| Apple Jacks cereal.
|
| Philosophically, man, humans weren't meant to have fresh
| produce of all kinds from all over the world year-round. That
| a lot of us do can be a nice luxury for some, but I think
| it'd be really hard to justify such a state as a necessary
| component of a healthy diet.
|
| I agree with you that budgeting sucks and is harder the less
| you have, though.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > You really need to optimize for calories. Pasta, dried
| beans, potatoes, not much meat or dairy, even produce is a
| bit of a luxury.
|
| Pasta, rice, beans, and potatoes are good for calories but
| time consuming to prepare. They're also difficult to prepare
| if you've got a shitty stove, a lot of cheap apartments have
| ridiculously terrible electric stoves. The above food are
| also bland without some seasoning which is another thing to
| buy. A microwave a one or two good microwave safe containers
| is usually much cheaper, faster, and more consistent.
|
| If you're on $5 a day to eat you'll get more variety and
| options just getting canned food. While dollar stores lack
| _fresh_ produce they usually have a fair amount of canned
| produce. While obviously not as good it 's better than pasta
| and rice every day.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > $40/week for a single person isn't an easy food budget
|
| What? One person can easily get by on $40/week for food.
| jandrese wrote:
| Start working it out at your grocery store. It's not as
| easy as it looks.
|
| I'm not saying it is impossible, far from it, but you do
| have to be conscious of every single purchase. That head of
| broccoli is $2 this week? Maybe not in the budget. Apples
| are up to $1/each again, those are right out. These aren't
| crazy organic prices either, this is regular produce and
| store brands. This goes double if you're trying to eat a
| healthy balanced diet and not going for a college kid ramen
| diet.
|
| Even worse with a budget so small it is hard to take
| advantage of buying in bulk to save money. Buy a 50lb sack
| of potatoes and you can't afford to each much of anything
| else for the week. Buying flour to make bread is a great
| cost saver when you are buying in 40lb bags, but not so
| great in the 5lb bags with the markup.
| [deleted]
| tantalor wrote:
| That quote is absurd. A Chrysler 300 is a luxury car.
| thisisnico wrote:
| Not necessarily, let's say it's a 2008, you can easily find
| 300 junkers now worth almost nothing.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Are these any good? I might need a car on the cheap soon.
| kube-system wrote:
| It depends on what your criteria for "any good" are. Most
| cars that have depreciated rapidly do so because their
| maintenance burden is high. If you think you have a
| better-than-average ability to absorb or mitigate this
| risk, then it might be a wise purchase. If you cannot, it
| is probably an unwise purchase.
| sologoub wrote:
| Chrysler 300s have been on the road for a long time. Just
| because new one is in the $35k range doesn't mean that one
| from 10-15 years ago is that expensive. Chryslers also
| generally depreciate faster than say a Toyota Camry or
| Corolla.
| function_seven wrote:
| Eh. I mean, I know it _wants_ to be one. And brand new I 'm
| sure they're nice. But most 300s I see around me are old
| beaters you can buy (even now) for less than $6k. [0]
|
| And if someone needs an occasional quart of oil for their
| car, it's likely got some miles on it. It's not some pricey
| luxury automobile anymore. It's just an old Chrysler.
|
| [0] https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-
| sale/vehicledetails.xhtm...
| [deleted]
| Arrath wrote:
| Cool. Get hung up on one aspect of the story (for no good
| reason) and ignore the broader economic and societal
| implications.
| erentz wrote:
| I may be mistaking it for another car, but they also seemed
| to be popular with Uber drivers. So maybe he got conned into
| the "buy a Chrysler 300 on this here loan and drive for Uber
| black" thing.
| ingenieros wrote:
| hear hear
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88, which
| translates into roughly 1k calories/$1 delivered to your
| doorstep for free in two-three days. You can get similar
| calorie/$ value with pasta, peanut butter, oatmeal. No one who
| has $40/week to spend on food in America needs to go anywhere
| close to hungry if they don't waste their money and time
| driving to dollar stores to buy overpriced non-bulk groceries.
| You Americans can't afford frozen pizza and think that means
| you're suffering
| californical wrote:
| If someone only has $40 for groceries, how will they be able
| to come up with $88 for just plain rice?
|
| The answer is that they can't get those same discounts buying
| larger scale items.
|
| I agree there are still some cases where people may spend
| irresponsibly, but it's a different problem than "cheaper
| calories exist in large enough quantities"
| mmastrac wrote:
| Ok, so you now need:
|
| A credit card + bank account
|
| A stable address and room to store bulk stuff
|
| A place to get packages where they won't be stolen
|
| $88
| heartbreak wrote:
| > A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88
|
| There's an obvious problem with cost per unit tricks like
| this. You have to be able to front the money to buy the big
| bag of rice. If your food budget is $40/wk, how are you going
| to spend $88 on a bag of rice? With your non-existent savings
| account? By eating plain rice and literally nothing else for
| > two weeks?
| Jach wrote:
| I'm picking your response, but it's typical of an archetype
| that's bothersome in a different way to the GP's archetype
| of pointing out that volume discounts exist. When you're
| poor, your food budget isn't a crisp reliable $40/wk that
| you give like an API call to the store for a constant
| amount of the same food with $0 left. No, the amount varies
| up and down, as does the kind of food you get that week, as
| does the amount left over after all ordinary expenses. This
| leads to the conclusion that if your time frame expands
| beyond one week, saving is possible! Even poor people
| understand saving up, despite archetypes like the GP
| imagining this is unknown to them and that their particular
| proposal is the best course of action, or archetypes like
| yours imagining that it's somehow impossible for them. Oh,
| and a savings account is unnecessary.
|
| Incidentally, the _median_ US household is said by the BLS
| to be capable of saving $1k /mo after all ordinary
| expenses. For those who actually save, a savings account
| typically isn't the mechanism to do it. This leads to
| "funny" statistics pushed by news outlets on how a huge
| percentage of people, even HNers who have thousands or even
| millions saved up in mostly liquid assets, have no savings,
| because they're sampling either non-existent or non-useful-
| and-thus-empty savings accounts.
| flatt wrote:
| I think the point is that people on the poverty line
| eventually have to start making decisions that will break
| them out of the cycle. There are plenty of programs out
| there that will do just that. A 50lb bag of rice might very
| well be too much upfront but it might mean hitting the
| local food pantry while building up a pantry full of
| staples from EBT. I don't pretend this is an easy process
| but continuing to do that same and getting the same results
| shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Additionally, it can't
| be stated enough how important it is to build up credit for
| these people.
| Strom wrote:
| You could do a community purchase with your neighbors.
| Where I'm from people even register officially as
| cooperatives in order to buy stuff at bulk with proper
| accounting. Now some people who are super poor might also
| have horrible social skills, but that is already a
| compounding issue and moves goal posts.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| As pointed out elsewhere, when you are dirt poor it's not
| about unit price. It's about cash flow. Very often it's
| impossible to drop $90 at once on _anything_ , not to mention
| the luxury of having Amazon Prime.
| mynameishere wrote:
| All of the people objecting to your comment seem to believe
| that the poor have no access to credit. Obviously, they do,
| often to a dangerous extent. And obviously, a wise use of the
| same credit that gets plastic trash at Walmart could get bulk
| food. But there are people (and not just "the poor") who
| simply don't plan ahead, ever, and sure don't plan ahead
| something that will require very bland-sounding food prep,
| week after week after week.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| "In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar
| store."
|
| I do not think it means half of Americans buy groceries from
| dollar general. I do not think it means of all those who shop
| groceries, half of them buy it from dollar general. I think it
| means, half of the people who buy stuff at dollar store also
| buy some groceries there. It does not mean much when put it
| that way.
|
| I am familiar with poor people's shopping habits. The biggest
| advantage that Dollar stores have over others is not the price
| but rather their convenient location. A lot of Indians/Chinese
| students who come on shoestring budget would often buy lot of
| junk food from dollar store because they did not own car. For
| other items such as rice etc. they would request me to buy a
| large bag for them and then divide it among themselves.
| Similarly, trip to walmart etc. were rationed mostly because
| they did not own cars. People who owned cars on other hand
| could stretch their budgets even more. It was not uncommon for
| 5 of the folks to share one car, share a costco membership and
| buy in bulk and save lot of money in the process.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar
| store.
|
| I think you are misreading the (ambiguous) mashed.com text, _"
| More than half of shoppers now visit dollar stores to buy
| groceries, eMarketer reports, up from 21 percent just a few
| years ago."_. It does not mean that more than half of all
| grocery shoppers buy their groceries at dollar stores, but that
| more than half of _dollar store shoppers_ are shopping at the
| dollar store to buy groceries.
|
| Actual market share of dollar stores in the grocery business is
| 2.9%, but this is expected to increase to 3.2%
|
| https://www.supermarketnews.com/issues-trends/will-supermark...
| bluedino wrote:
| If you want to save money on groceries you should be going to
| Aldi or Sav a Lot, not Dollar stores. Their products are
| terrible (mostly house brands) and prices aren't even good.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Neither of those are in rural areas. Heck, people I know in
| urban areas are still excited when the Aldi's come to town.
| Osiris wrote:
| The first model of the recent generation was 2005, so it
| could be a 16 year old car. A quick check on Autotrader shows
| these cars selling for about $6500.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| His Chrysler 300?
|
| This thing Wikipedia describes as a V8 powered "full-size
| luxury car"?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_300
| kevinob11 wrote:
| In my experience it is incredibly common for people without
| much money to have cars that seem impractical, because they
| are easy to buy but hard to maintain. I think this is pretty
| common with cars that were very popular when they were first
| released (the 300 was) so the market is saturated with old
| ones in rough condition that are cheap to purchase but
| terrible to maintain.
|
| Sample size of 1, but my roommate in college (I was in
| college, he was not) went through 3 cars in the amount of
| time I had just 1 because he only ever had enough money to
| buy a crappy car and had terrible credit. They all broke down
| pretty quickly so he ended up spending more in the long-run,
| but in the end he had to get to work, so he did what he had
| to do.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Well cared for FCA products (and several other makes) are
| rare because they offer permissive financing and tons of
| incentives and intentionally design to keep low MSRPs. This
| results in lots of of people of more modest means owning
| them initially. That is a recipe for hard miles and minimal
| maintenance.
|
| Your average Chrysler 300 is likely to have far more wear
| on the bump stops and in the back seats and trunk and far
| fewer scheduled maintenance items done than a 4Runner or
| some other car that has high class first owners.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| It's usually a greater-than decade old vehicle, common in the
| early-mid 2000's. Luxury cars (especially American luxury
| cars) have a trend of being extremely inexpensive to purchase
| compared to other vehicles when the age vs. their original
| price.
|
| For example, a similar year Toyota, Subaru, or pre-CVT
| Nissans will hold higher values than equivalent American
| brand vehicles, with some exceptions.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >For example, a similar year Toyota, Subaru, or pre-CVT
| Nissans will hold higher values than equivalent American
| brand vehicles, with some exceptions.
|
| Cars move down the economic ladder as they age. A similiar
| _year_ Camry, Accord, or other InternetApproved(TM) cheap
| to run commuter car, is going to be in much nicer shape
| because it started a few dozen rungs higher than that '04
| Impala, Sebring or whatever domestic we're comparing to.
| The price will reflect that niceness.
|
| The Camry that's the same _price_ as the average '04
| Impala is going to be in equivalently rough shape and will
| be an older model year because it took it longer to get to
| that point because it started in nicer hands.
|
| Seriously, punch in a $3000 price limit into your preferred
| classified section and see what it gets you.
|
| These people are poor, not stupid. They're buying
| Big3/Korean/VW/Nissan sedans because that's what's
| available in the best condition and lowest miles at that
| price point because nobody wants them because they're not
| as practical as crossovers and people making white collar
| money don't fetishize them as ideal beater cars the way
| they do Toyotas and Hondas of that era.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| And there are 2006 Chrysler 300s in the Bay Area for under $4
| grand a piece on craigslist. As an asking price. The parts
| seem fairly affordable as well, judging from the parted out
| ones also on the bay area craiglist.
|
| It's entirely reasonable that poor people have older model
| luxury cars, either purchased 3rd hand or from when they were
| better off financially. After all, how much do you think
| you'd pocket selling your old 2006 [any non-collectable car]
| if you had to buy something new to drive around.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yeah. If you want a V8 sedan on a budget Chrysler 300s are
| a great option (as were the used Ford panther family of
| cars that preceded them in that market niche).
|
| ....which is why they're so stigmatized by the white collar
| well to do crowd.
| keyboardCowBoy wrote:
| Just about every full size luxury car depreciates faster then
| anything else on the market meaning an older luxury sedan
| COULD be affordable to the average person. All though I would
| not consider this a smart idea unless you are mechanically
| inclined. Chrysler sold more V6 300's than V8's anyway -- Try
| again.
| steverb wrote:
| I mean, it probably was a "luxury" car when it was new. They
| do not hold their value though.
| function_seven wrote:
| Probably more like a cheap V6 leaking or burning oil.
| Something like this [0] (Not that I'm accusing that specific
| one, but I wouldn't bet against it either)
|
| [0] https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-
| sale/vehicledetails.xhtm...
| elliekelly wrote:
| My first car was a luxury car... fifteen years before I
| bought it. I like to think I got a good deal thanks to the
| ugly tomato red interior.
| lost-found wrote:
| In no world is a Chrysler 300 a luxury car.
| kube-system wrote:
| It isn't a good luxury car, but it objectively is one.
| "Luxury car" is a description of market segment, not a
| measure of quality.
| worstestes wrote:
| These are a dime a dozen on the used market.. Could easily be
| one from the mid 2000s. Literally 1-3k for a 2005-08
| (condition varies of course)
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| Also, a lot of places that don't have a local grocery store do
| have a dollar store. You can make $40 into a pretty luxurious
| week of food at Aldi if you know how to cook, and a perfectly
| fine week of food if you don't. The problem is when the nearest
| Aldi is miles away, or you don't drive.
| Jach wrote:
| Just because a store has 'dollar' in its name doesn't mean it's
| a dollar store. Dollar General in particular is not the kind of
| store where all or even most things are a dollar, which was the
| traditional meaning of 'dollar store'.
|
| At least your own source notes this: "And despite their names,
| many dollar chains, including Family Dollar and Dollar General,
| sell items that cost $10 or more. Dollar Tree remains the only
| major retailer that continues to price its entire inventory for
| $1."
|
| I shopped at a couple Dollar Generals on a road trip this past
| summer (it was interesting to see how many towns we passed
| through had one, as opposed to some other brand) and it seemed
| to me like a scaled down Fred Meyer, or a super scaled down
| Walmart. Maybe a scaled up gas station? And that's fine for
| most people, as evidenced by their market success. They tend to
| stock the same popular stuff as a bigger grocery store would.
| But you're not magically going to pay $1 for your full sized
| frozen pizza just because of the name. Indeed I can see an ad
| advertising two-for-$8 Tombstone pizzas, which is about the
| same as routine sales at my local Safeway in the rich Seattle
| area.
|
| (And an edit for your edit, you're vaguely complaining that
| something is wrong for the subset of people where such stores
| are the _only_ option, as if shipping and delivery don 't
| exist, but whatever, you want them to have _no_ options? I know
| you probably don 't but it'd be more constructive to articulate
| what you actually want.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Isn't that the motor oil that's not rated for cars after the
| mid-80s or something?
| Jach wrote:
| It was probably thrown in to give a sense of the variety
| available, but just about every grocery store or even gas
| station has cheap motor oil available. It's not like you need
| very much of it very often. It's just a bad article with bad
| quotes. I'm sure a huge number of people on HN remember weeks
| as a poor student and having to hack $10 to last a week or
| more. $40 a week, that's a luxury!
| fortran77 wrote:
| > It's not like you need very much of it very often
|
| You never drove an old hooptie, like I did in my early
| years!
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Oh, how I am reminded that I need to add yet another
| quart of oil into my Isuzu for the next two weeks.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| So that's how you keep it from rolling over.
| kube-system wrote:
| Dollar Tree motor oil is API SN rated. It is basic oil that
| will work in many basic late model vehicles.
| generalizations wrote:
| That's the significance of _Dollar Tree_ making this
| announcement - they are the dollar store chain that does
| actually price everything at $1.
| xapata wrote:
| > afford
|
| Afford is an elusive concept. Dollar stores are often more
| expensive per-unit, but cheaper per-package. If the shoppers
| had better access to financing, some might choose to take a
| longer trip to, say, Costco, and buy things at a cheaper per-
| unit price in a more expensive package.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Pretty sure the idea of financing groceries, or common
| daily/weekly expendables isn't a very good one.
| brewdad wrote:
| Why do you think payday loan shops exist?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Primarily to pay government fines and auto repair bills.
| Nobody is getting a payday loan to buy groceries. They're
| doing it to stave off things that if ignored will cause
| them to lose their income and slide further into poverty.
|
| They're poor, not stupid.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are other reasons that people buy from dollar stores. I
| occasionally buy a few things at Dollar Tree when I want a
| smaller portion sizes for some basic goods. I also just like
| going when I'm in the mood to impulse buy stuff for hobbies
| etc.
|
| Dollar General, on the other hand, has notoriously positioned
| itself in underserved areas. While it's true that many of these
| areas are underserved because they are low-income areas, that's
| not necessarily the case. In semi-rural areas, Dollar General
| is often the closest general goods store, and people of all
| income levels will go there.
| NotQuitePls wrote:
| Whenever an article says cheap food is bad, just close it.
|
| You can get a loaf of whole wheat bread for $1, or you can buy
| a TV dinner for $1.
|
| Efficiency Is Everything website has researched this.
|
| This is a low information problem, not a capitalism problem.
| rudolph9 wrote:
| I don't think you appreciate that everything at "Dollar Tree"
| actually costs a dollar or at leas did.
| raydev wrote:
| > grocery shopping in dollar stores
|
| > Dollar General
|
| Dollar General has never been a "dollar store" in the way
| you're thinking.
| werber wrote:
| Dollar tree is really interesting to me, they get remaindered
| books from all over the spectrum I would have heard of if it
| weren't a stop on my walks. My most recent find was "when you die
| you won't be scared to die".
| kumarsw wrote:
| They have been selling for a dollar for 35 years. I'm really
| curious how their inventory has changed over this period. One
| 2020 dollar is 40 cents in 1985 dollars, but the cost of consumer
| goods has decreased significantly since 1985. So I wouldn't be
| surprised that their package sizes have not changed much.
|
| Related trivia: Between 1886-1959, the price of a bottle of Coke
| was a nickel [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/15/165143816/why-...
| koolba wrote:
| Likely through shrinkflation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation
|
| Next time you're at the supermarket check if the bacon brands
| you remember are still a pound. I bet many of them are now 12
| ounces.
| paulpauper wrote:
| by charging huge markup on per unit cost by reducing
| quantity. 3 pills of Tylenol for example for $1 instead of a
| bottle which may have dozens for $6 . The brands create
| special mini-sized packages specifically for dollar stores.
| Big business.
| codazoda wrote:
| See Sharpie pens, which are sold at dollar stores with less
| ink.
| kube-system wrote:
| Which is why I buy mine there. I have never run a Sharpie
| out of ink but I have lost them or broken them.
| 14 wrote:
| With often same great sized packaging only with smaller
| amounts inside. Very wasteful. Deodorant, chips, pills, etc
| all look like a normal sized bottle but in reality is a
| smaller size for dollar stores. I have also heard things
| like canned goods of say a brand of soup they have special
| made for places like Costco that demand higher quality
| ingredients where the dollar store would get lower quality
| versions. Perhaps cheaper meat or less of it. Still tastes
| like the original just that it's not actually nutritionally
| the same.
| OJFord wrote:
| (Not from around there) Costco demands higher quality
| ingredients? I thought it was a low-end cheap
| bulk/wholesale place?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Costco is not low-end; it is inexpensive, but that is
| because its revenue model is near-zero margin on items
| with its profit derived from membership charges, focuses
| on large package sizes, etc. Reputation for quality is
| part of what helps it sell memberships, so its important.
| 14 wrote:
| I don't have a source on that claim I believe I saw it in
| a video that was discussing the food supply chain. The
| same is true for some grocery stores. Walmart for example
| gets low grade fruits and veggies. Where somewhere like a
| Quality Foods gets higher end stuff graded better. It
| will be sweeter or Moreno flavourful. It sounds
| believable but again don't have a source for you.
| moltar wrote:
| Costco is known for less of a choice, but whatever choice
| there is you can trust it to be of a higher quality.
|
| When I go to Costco I definitely have my guard down and
| don't vet and don't scrutinize each product as much as i
| would do at other stores.
| htek wrote:
| This reminds me of an argument I had a few Thanksgivings
| ago with an aunt who loudly proclaimed that the $0.49 can
| of black beans from the bargain store is exactly the same
| as the $3.49 can of black beans from the supermarket.
| kube-system wrote:
| That could be the case, for black beans. $3.49 for a can
| of black beans is highway robbery. Beans are among the
| cheapest foods on the planet.
|
| My local _Whole Foods_ charges $0.89 for a 15oz can.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Also great for someone with an occasional sweet tooth and
| insufficient willpower to have junk food at the house.
| Sometimes I just want 4 Oreos and I'll happily pay a huge
| per-unit markup to avoid eating the whole box.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| ever so often I get that crazy look from the store
| assistant when they offer me (something like) double what
| your're buying for a few pence more and I say no thanks -
| typically I'm holding my belly whilst saying no
| toxik wrote:
| Imagine if bartenders offered alcoholics 20% off if they
| bought two
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Sometimes beers come in multiple sizes and I'm pretty
| sure the price grows sub-linearly with volume.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's sorta what happy hour is.
| bluedino wrote:
| Dollar Tree sells $1 steak. They are like 3oz
| dopp0 wrote:
| it hurts to read this d**ss conversion #makeAmericaSIAgain
| handrous wrote:
| My wife's preferred brand of pre-made iced tea recently
| slightly changed the packaging for their large-sized bottles.
| Checked, and sure enough, they dropped from 64oz to about
| 59oz.
|
| [EDIT] Oh, and in the case of Everything's a Dollar (used to
| be better than Dollar Tree, dunno if it's still around) and
| similar: as someone who got a lot of toys there as a kid and
| has been in a handful of times in the last few years for
| various things, I can vouch for their toy selection being
| _much_ better in the '90s.
| reginold wrote:
| What are the economics like on prepared drinks? Seems like
| transporting a bunch of water around is wasteful and
| expensive. I guess the revenues are so much greater than
| costs it doesn't matter - but here we have them shrinking
| the portion size.
| m0lecules wrote:
| in that particular case, it boils down to how many you
| can fit on a pallet. if you get an extra row or column or
| both, you're now selling 550 bottles per pallet instead
| of 500.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The bottling plants for soda etc. tend to be fairly
| local. Syrup gets shipped further.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >Next time you're at the supermarket check if the bacon
| brands you remember are still a pound. I bet many of them are
| now 12 ounces.
|
| Coffee as well.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's been a long time since a "half gallon" of ice cream
| became 3 pints in size.
| david422 wrote:
| And then the inevitable "Now, 30% more!".
| function_seven wrote:
| Many years ago they went to 1.75 qt across the board. I
| was mad, but what could I do?
|
| Then they dropped it again to 1.5 qt (3 pints), except
| for Tillamook. So I bought Tillamook and was happy they
| were the benevolent company that took a stand against
| shrinkfla... shit Tillamook is now 1.5 qt as well.
|
| I'm mad again. At least they still use actual ice cream
| ingredients. I won't punish them for succumbing to the
| shrink ray. They held out longer than others.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 12 ounces is, apparently, 0.75 pounds. It's about 340 grams.
| ruined wrote:
| good bot
| idonotknowwhy wrote:
| I wish you were always 12 minutes in front of me in comment
| threads :)
| asdff wrote:
| When you go to the grocery store now, at least locally, seems
| that there are more varieties in package sizes of the tiny
| 7.5 oz cans of coke vs the full size 12 oz cans. If you want
| the tiny cans a six pack or a full case is available, if you
| want the large cans you have to get the entire case of 12, no
| six pack sold. If you convert the price per ounce you get a
| pretty raw deal on the tiny cans. IIRC the 12 pack was only
| like a dollar less for the 7.5oz cans vs the 12oz 12 pack.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Those used to be 8oz cans, too, I think.
| melony wrote:
| Globalisation happened, massive economies of scale in
| manufacturing.
| echelon wrote:
| And now globalization has equalized global workforces with
| purchase and compensation parity. Costs must rise.
|
| Money is to be made on trade and labor cost deltas, but those
| eventually, almost thermodynamically, equalize.
| jbay808 wrote:
| That's one thing. Also, China is no longer buying US
| treasuries, which for a long time contributed to reducing
| US inflation via underpriced imports.
| melony wrote:
| So what are they doing with the extra US dollars now?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Belt and Road Initiative:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
|
| Basically, they're using it to buy American heavy
| equipment and build infrastructure in developing nations,
| principally in Africa and Central Asia. They lease the
| infrastructure back to the host country for cash (i.e.
| favorable terms of trade), and if the host country
| defaults, there's a clause that China can take over the
| infrastructure. They may have similar clauses in case of
| military action, though in that case, it kinda doesn't
| matter what the law or contract says.
|
| It's China's version of the petrodollar-for-military-
| bases system. When you run a trade surplus, use that to
| build up infrastructure that you can take advantage of in
| geopolitical conflicts. Colonialism never really went
| away, it just got more refined.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Buying oil, I think. And perhaps saving some for
| Evergrande's rainy day.
| Retric wrote:
| Comparative advantage is still in effect. It just comes
| down to stuff like economics of scale, language, local
| laws, etc rather than simply ultra low wages.
|
| An interesting long term effect of this is there is a
| second whiplash as stalled first world economies eventually
| benefit from the world catching up to them.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I would trust a private inventory and accounting audit of the
| dollar tree for insight into inflation more than almost any
| government funded study.
| lgbfjb wrote:
| Let's Go Brandon!
| h2odragon wrote:
| They ought to bite the bullet and jump to "Tree Fiddy"
| syshum wrote:
| I so want to see that store become a reality
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| They could run a variety of them under the same brand umbrella.
| When I was a kid, there were small chains of clothing stores
| with names like Simply Six and Max 10, all run by the same
| company (oddly enough, KinderCare).
| keyboardCowBoy wrote:
| Brandon's inflation is really just getting started. Anyone on a
| fixed income and low income earners are really going to get hurt.
| Hold on.
| jmoak wrote:
| They were so close to being called: The Dollar "Three".
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Honestly, it would probably be better if things sold for $4.
|
| We have Dollorama in Canada. Things sell for $4. The jump in
| quality is noticeable from $1 to $4. The difference between
| useless junk, and something quite good, or at least good enough.
| Makes the shopping experience much better too.
| sabhiram wrote:
| Looking forward to the day where we start printing 1000$ bills
| again.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The folks who want your bank to snitch on you each time you
| have a transaction $600 or larger aren't going to let you have
| such a large denomination bill that they can't track. Wouldn't
| be surprised if at some point they try to do away with the
| $100.
| hirundo wrote:
| They should update the price point annually based on some simple
| algorithm, like the amount they pay an entry level employee per
| 20 minutes of work. That serves to index the unit price to
| purchasing power.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| A single business can't make a dent in taming stagflation.
| They'll be trying to turn a tide with an oar!
|
| If the supplier charges more they'll have to put the price up.
| If they put it up too high to compensate staff people will go
| elsewhere.
| tibanne wrote:
| Soon $3.50 tree.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Reminds me of the 99c DREAMS stores in Brooklyn. "Everything 99c
| and up!"
| ourmandave wrote:
| "Actually it's a buck and a quarter staff, but I'm not telling
| him that." ~ Daffy
| enlightens wrote:
| I appreciate this.
| sabujp wrote:
| What this also doesn't mention is shrinkflation and quality
| reduction, so for many items you're probably paying closer to
| $1.50 - $1.75.
| Marciplan wrote:
| Its transitory
| taterbase wrote:
| Slightly off topic: The New Yorker had a really interesting
| article about dollar stores and how their presence can
| potentially harm communities rather than help.
|
| https://archive.ph/O7EbO
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| i see dollar tree going broke...they used to sell groceries and
| sundry goods cheaper than the big stores...now they are more
| expensive with a lot of item as compared to the bigger
| stores...convenience stores with gas pumps can get away with that
| --everyone needs gas...but now that dollar store is no longer
| cheaper than the big stores, and have no gas pumps, what is the
| attraction?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The company also owns the Family Dollar chain and has been
| converting some stores into dual brands. Those conversions
| might increase as it gives the company a way to maintain both
| brands but not be limited by the $1 (or $1.25) price point.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Family Dollar hasn't sold things at a dollar price point in
| years. They're basically big convenience stores with makeup,
| clothing, and toiletries sections.
| snarf21 wrote:
| If you are close to a bigger store, then you have a choice. In
| lots of the US, the closest grocery and department store could
| be quite a ways away. They are growing like crazy in these
| areas. I agree that they are becoming a mix of a grocery store,
| convenience store and Wal-Mart but I think that is what the
| rural markets want. If they need something special, that can be
| saved for a special trip to "town".
| danaris wrote:
| Hard to understate this. There are rural areas where there's
| a Dollar Tree in every little town, but you have to drive 1-2
| hours to the nearest WalMart--and further to the nearest
| Anything Else Worth Shopping At.
| luke2m wrote:
| Dollar General is more common here, which is slightly
| better -- the prices are slightly higher and some have
| produce etc.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Are you thinking Dollar General? No Dollar Tree I've been in
| had groceries--maybe candy, but usually it's things like cheap
| plastic toys, paper plates/plasticware and cheap decorations
| for birthdays and the current holiday.
| pigeons wrote:
| Yes some Dollar Tree stores have refrigerated and freezer
| sections.
| fanniemae wrote:
| Can confirm, the Dollar Tree near me has this.
| vgeek wrote:
| Dollar Tree can't be beat for things like cleaning supplies,
| commodity-type CPG items like soap and seasonal decorations-- but
| those items likely aren't where they make their money (they
| average a 30% GM, imported trinkets will have higher margin but
| lower volume than consumer staples). I've spoken to managers at
| multiple locations and the consensus top category by volume is
| candy, followed by paper goods. After that, the responses tend to
| vary.
|
| Things like food are already a bad deal when compared to standard
| retailers-- they are typically smaller quantities at a _much_
| higher price per unit, and the products they carry are more
| processed so as to reduce costs and increase shelf-life. Then
| when a 1:1 comparison is made, they are often 30-50% more
| expensive (e.g. can of chunk light tuna for $1 vs $0.65 or less
| at Aldi). Going the route of 99 Center or the fast growing Five
| Below chain where they sell items for under $3 or $5, but with
| better quality items would have been an interesting approach, but
| that probably encroaches too much on their "up-market" Family
| Dollar locations? All being told, I wonder the price elasticity
| of candy and hyperprocessed foods are.
| tombert wrote:
| > they are typically smaller quantities at a much higher price
| per unit
|
| I think that's true throughout most of the country, but in NYC
| I actually think Dollar Tree is a fairly good deal. They sell
| the same little frozen pizzas (that I'm addicted to for some
| reason) as the C-Town a block away from me, but for half the
| price. I think that is largely because NYC is ridiculously
| overpriced to live in.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Sure, if you have time to wait on a huge line. Every time I
| find myself in a dollar store there's one cashier serving
| dozens of angry people lined up to checkout. Whatever deal I
| might be getting isn't worth my time to actually wait to pay.
| tombert wrote:
| I think this is _highly_ variable between stores. When I
| lived in Dallas, the line to check out at Dollar Tree was
| ridiculous, but the one I live near in Brooklyn typically has
| multiple lines with a few cashiers working. I don 't think
| I've ever waited more than 15 minutes, and typically I wait
| less than five.
| janmo wrote:
| In Europe we also have 1 Euro shops that now sell for 1.10EUR
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