corporate greed $

Is there any large company that does not donate to the Republican Party?

... Fuck.

I used to like dollar tree.

Well. They're dead to me now.

Of course, I'm lucky enough that I can afford to shop elsewhere; it's the duty of all those who are capable to abstain for the sake of those who cannot.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Men at Arms

-Sir Terry Pratchett

I like to take virtual tours of dead/dying towns via Street View. The one constant is that the one main Street has one Dollar General with cars in the parking lot, on the outskirts of town. The proper grocery/general stores are all dilapidated husks 'down town'.

Dollar Trees and Dollar Generals fuck over poor people. Those “cheater” sizes of cleaning supplies or similar cost more for the same amount of product, it’s just that if you are broke you can only afford the tiny ass bottle of laundry detergent or whatever in the short term.

I'm so glad the "cheap" stores around here don't sell tiny versions of products. It's non-brand name/lower quality or larger quantities to make them cheaper per volume.

For example my current toilet paper brand comes in four packs in the grocery store, with consistently good quality. The "cheap" store sell nine packs of the same stuff for 50% or so more, but you risk getting some that are slightly worse quality than the four packs. It's made in the same factory and is never bad, it's just that the second tier of quality control goes into the bulk ones.

Side note: I know people who have worked in/with soap facilities. And they mix, bottle and ship out dozens of brands. The majority of each type of soap, is made from the same base ingredients. Some are a bit watered down, lack pleasant scent, color or similar. But you can easily find soap that is at half the price of fancy ones, that work just as well(might need tiny bit more, but not enough that you lose money).

It also works the other way around, if you choose to spend your money on cheap supplies (because you are shortsighted) it will cost you more money in the long run.

A lot of people need to learn how to use their money effectively, and budgeting can help for some.

Those “cheater” sizes of cleaning supplies or similar cost more for the same amount of product, it’s just that if you are broke you can only afford the tiny ass bottle of laundry detergent or whatever in the short term.

I didn't notice how different the sizes were until I stopped going for years (between 2020 and 2024) and came back to find products that looked ridiculously tiny compared to what I remembered. The covid inflation fest made it way too obvious.

McDonald's and Walmart will lobby against that.

Or you could just raise the minimum wage to a point where employees earning it are earning too much for food stamps. That's how the UK does it. They lower the benefits bill by putting the burden on businesses rather than the state.

Maybe as a punishment. It wouldn't solve the problem in the correct way unless the taxes were MORE than the cost of paying a livable wage. Because the taxes would, at best and very optimistically, go towards programs that then give out money but only for very specific things like Medicaid or SNAP. It would be better for everyone if those employees just got the money as cash to use as they see fit rather than as a benefit that has to be used on certain kinds of food.

One thing that isn't on the math side: profit is the money left over after payroll (and all other expenses).

Dollar Tree has about 200,000 employees. Paying each of them $8 an hour for 20 hours a week, 52 weeks a year is ~$1.6 billion. This is just napkin math, taking a guess at where an average hourly employee would be working, hours-wise. Assuming the profit is going straight into company coffers, they could afford to significantly increase pay or hours overall, but the money doesn't stretch as far as our intuition might think. The problem really might not be Dollar Tree specifically, but the system of economy that led to its creation, and the creation of other massive corporations that rest on the back of underpaid workers.

Their only real options as the system stands (not that it wouldn't be moving in the right direction) are to pay less people more money, or increase hours. Their margin is thinner than it looks. Far better to throw the system out than pretend that the $10 million CEO check is anything but a drop in the bucket compared to the crushing reality of shareholder-driven profit margins. Fuck capitalism.

Agreed. Employees should also have ownership in the company via profit sharing or ESOP.

If the internet has taught me anything, it's that would be a bad idea.

I agree that executives make FAR beyond what they should.

What would end up happening is the internet would be trolls, and say the executives either make 500 billion per day, OR they make 1 penny per year.

Both of which mean every single company folds very quickly. Which means no more electricity. No more water. No more grocery stores.

I think a healthier solution is to regulate the concept of capitolism so it ties the whole of an industry (not the individual companies) to be only able to charge what the lowest tax bracket can afford. Then tax the wealthy the highest, and the poor the lowest.

"Socialise the cost. Privatise the profits" is the motto.

It's kind of infuriating that if you're wealthy you basically get basic income. You can put some of your money in safe stuff (high yield savings, bonds, whatever) and just get more money without working. But a poor person needs to debase themselves for food.

Some More News, and The Humanist Report are making a lot of money being actual journalists. Last Week Tonight, and to a lesser extent The Daily Show are also trying to report what the MSM is ignoring. Perhaps you just aren't looking for the real journalism?

It's a store in the US that sells most stuff for $1, for context. Or $1.25 now apparently

John Oliver did a piece on dollar stores about a year ago, if you're interested https://youtu.be/p4QGOHahiVM

Minimum wage nationwide in America is $7.25 an hour. Well below poverty line.

You forgot that the 1.23 billion is in profits, not revenue. This means their revenue is much higher.

The other factor is those 214,000 employees don't all work full time. A high percentage are part time.

The easiest solution would be to greatly reduce CEO pay (reducing by 9 million would cover the cost of 375 full time employees at your calculation), and reduce the amount of employees but make them fulltime at 35 hours, but make it so they also get mandatory 3 weeks vacation (paid at 30%), or 2 week vacation with full paid sick leave.

Yes, there would be less jobs, but each of those jobs would actually pay enough to live off of. Dollar tree doesn't really operate in high cost areas so that 12/hr would be enough to cover expenses for most of their employees.

There's probably many other optimizations they could do but haven't because why should they when they're already making over a billion in profits.

You probably don't want to get caught shoplifting from the only place in your town that sells groceries.

They aren't.

Source: Watched a lady get thrown out of Dollar Tree for shoplifting