There are more than 34,000 Dollar General, Dollar Store, and Family Dollar stores across the country, more locations than Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and Target combined. A new one opens every 6 hours, usually in a lower-income area. Dollar General is a Fortune 500 company, worth more than Coca Cola. Dollar stores did it the old-fashioned way: scamming poor people.
More:
“The economics of dollar stores,” Zachary Crockett, The Hustle
Dollar General has reported 31 consecutive years of growth and is opening two new U.S. stores every day, usually in rural areas with few other retail options. This Wall Street Journal video explains.
“The world’s largest retailer is rolling out 360 autonomous floor-scrubbing robots in some of its stores in the U.S. by the end of the January, it said in a joint statement with Brain Corp., which makes the machines. The autonomous janitors can clean floors on their own even when customers are around, according to the San Diego-based startup.”
–“Robot Janitors Are Coming to Mop Floors at a Walmart Near You,” Pavel Alpeyev, Bloomberg
That means Walmart will retrain its janitors as cashiers and open more checkout lines, right? Ha.
For centuries buying something meant haggling, negotiating with shopkeepers to get a lower price. As a result, the same goods cost different people different prices. In the mid-19th century, U.S. Quakers came to believe that charging people different amounts for the same item was immoral, so they started using price tags which, if not more moral, are more efficient.
Licenses for a New York City hot dog stand can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There are 3,100 hot dog stand licenses in New York City, and there’s a 20 year waiting list for them. The licenses, not the hot dogs.
A “Half as Interesting” video from Wendover Productions
Update:
“‘Unjust and immoral’: street vendors call on New York City to issue more permits,” Erin Durkin, The Guardian
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