I still say that the best of charitable intentions will founder if they’re based on the presumption that the poor are just like you and me, only without money. A related question might be why goods and services to the wealthy are notoriously different from those to the middle class; not just quantitively but qualitatively different. The answer being that the rich are different (how often do their checks bounce?) and so services to them can be based on business models with a different set of assumptions.
Are they though? I mean, rich people still use Tide for their laundry, they still drink Coke, they still wear underwear, and I doubt most rich people are necessarily wearing $40 a pair socks or underwear either.
Same with the poor; they’re largely buying the same stuff, but in more value versions or smaller quantities.
Reason: I live right near a very poor, crime-ridden area in Dallas, and the local grocery store has a weird mix of low income and mid-high income stuff. Largely it’s the same stuff though.
Sometimes - but a lot of times they are buying different , less expensive brands. “Sam’s cola” instead of “Coke” , or “Suavitel” instead of “Tide”. There are many many, items that come in different brands at different price points - it’s just that you won’t see the $30/pair Polo underwear or the $400+ robe in Target or Walmart.
I could buy the Dove bodywash in the drugstore/Walmart , etc. for about 10 for 30 oz, or 10 oz at Bath and Bodyworks for about 9 on sale L’Occitane en Provence shower gel at $24 for 8.5 oz. They all serve the same purpose , but they aren’t qualitatively the same. It’s not always an objective difference - a particular person might not even notice the difference between silk socks and cotton socks, or between the scent of Dove and L’Occitane. But one of the differences between income levels is not just noticing the difference but being willing and able to pay for the difference. I prefer L’Occitane - but I’m unwilling to pay for that difference at my current income . If I hit the lottery tomorrow, my bathroom would be full of that brand.
I don’t think it’s an issue of poor people making money from an investment in real estate. The issue is that if the opportunity to make money from an investment in real estate exists, people who aren’t poor will be the ones buying them up.
Is it an issue of non-profits or an issue of lower profits?
A regular business is looking to make money; that’s its primary goal. So if it’s making a choice between opening stores in rich communities which make ten million dollars a year in profits or in poor communities which make one million dollars a year in profits, it’s going to choose the rich communities.
But notice the stores in poor communities still make a profit. Operating stores there would not be a charity or a money-losing situation. Stores in poor communities could be self-sustaining
I agree that’s it’s not an exactly an issue about poor people making money - but it’s easy to prevent rich people from buying cheap. All you have to do is have income and asset limits. If I was going to subsidize low-cost housing, I wouldn’t want someone who bought the place for $15K to sell it for $500K a few years later. Because I didn’t subsidize it so they could make a huge profit - I subsidized it so they could have ownership at an affordable price. And it’s fine if they get their investment back but I’d want other people to benefit from the affordability, not just the first owners.
Who’s to say that rich people aren’t buying cheaper stuff? You’re making an assumption that because there are products marketed at different price points, that their consumers’ incomes line up similarly.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily a valid assumption. By that, I mean that someone like Mark Cuban may well use Irish Spring bar soap and Head & Shoulders shampoo, and shave with Barbasol foam & Gillette razors- there’s nothing saying that he has to go buy Frederic Malle Shower Gel, Philip Kingsley shampoo, Dior Shaving Gel, and a Bolin Webb razor.
Or for that matter, that poor(er) people are required to use value brands like White Rain or Suave versus Dove or even L’Occitane.
Of course they sell stuff at different price points, but much of that is aiming at aspirational poor/middle class people who want to think they’re buying “high end” stuff.
Of course individual people are different and of course rich people can buy cheaper stuff and poorer people can buy more expensive . But that’s why I said
rather than that they always buy different brands.
I think the problem with food deserts is real but it isn’t the problem people think it is.
I drive around Rochester, NY. When I drive down streets in poor communities I see all of these little bodegas. You can drive twenty blocks down Empire Boulevard or Portland Avenue and see ten or twelve of them. Buying groceries at these store costs more than buying the same groceries at Tops or Wegmans or Walmart.
So why don’t the people in these neighborhoods shop at Tops or Wegmans or Walmart? I think the answer lies in how many of these bodegas there are. They’re located so their customer base is people within walking distance.
That’s the hidden aspect of the food desert problem; poor people in cities often can’t afford to have a car. And without a car, you can’t go shopping at the supermarket that’s five miles away. You don’t even want to go shopping at a bodega that’s five blocks away. You end up buying your groceries from the one store that’s on your block and you only buy the amount of groceries you can carry back home under your arm.
Building grocery stores isn’t going to solve this problem. If you build a store in the middle of the poor community, you’ll help the people who live within a couple of blocks. But your store is almost as inaccessible to the people who live ten blocks away as those existing supermarkets are. And you can’t built a chain of supermarkets every couple of blocks.
So I feel the solution to the food desert problem isn’t more store. The solution is transportation. We need to either get cars into the hands of poor people so they can drive to supermarkets (and all of the other places they need to go) or we need a much better public transportation system.
I agree. There’s a “food desert” right near me, according to the USDA maps, and there’s literally a big Kroger supermarket across the street from one of the corners. The presumption is that people who live in this rather large area have no transportation, and must walk more than (I think) a mile to a grocery store.
The problem isn’t distribution of grocery stores, but rather people’s access to them. And one thing that makes this difficult is that often lower-income apartments and neighborhoods are located adjacent to industrial areas or highways, and not in larger, predominantly residential areas.
There are a LOT of grocery stores in my area for example, but there are also lower income areas that aren’t within easy walking distance of them.
This is a good post, and I would like to add one more “hidden aspect” to the food desert problem in poorer neighborhoods - lack of storage space.
Smaller apartments with smaller closets/pantries/refrigerators means more frequent trips to the grocery store to pick up smaller loads of necessities so that they can fit in what space is available. It makes for fewer opportunities to buy in volume and save money that way.
My daughter is away at school, living in a downtown studio apartment. SunLass is not buying toilet paper in 30-packs from Costco, so she’s paying more per sheet, nor is she buying black beans by the case to store in her kitchen cabinets, or large packs of frozen riced cauliflower to go in her freezer.
If i had billions of dollars I wouldn’t donate it to the poor, I’d donate it to neuroscience research. I’d do what Paul Allen did and build massive neuroscience research institutes.
Having said that, if my goal was to help the poor I’m guessing Bill Gates would be a good example. My understanding is that he has the issue researched to find the best way to have a positive impact.
The best ways seem to be (from what little I know of it) investing in things like nutrition, education and basic health care. Every dollar you invest in these things ends up creating multiple dollars in economic activity.
The goal of donating to the poor should be to improve their human capital so they can stand on their own two feet, and investing in their education and health seems the best way to do this.
The OP is basically just asking how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation operates. So, here’s its Wikipedia page that goes through a variety of the initiatives that they’re undertaking:
At one point, Warren Buffett’s plan for his fortune (currently $143 billion) was to hand the whole thing over to the Gates Foundation, on the theory that they already have a structure setup to evaluation how and where to spend money. But more recently, he’s pulled back on this commitment. And in fact, Bill Gates hasn’t given most of his fortune to his own foundation.
It’s probably good to keep some NASA budget level money around for if you ever need to worry about preserving the human race.
Education. More specifically, giving poor kids the sort of education that involves minimal screen time, unlimited access to a variety of books and art supplies, lots of attention from adults who have actual conversations with them, plenty of cool and interesting experiences that expose them to new things in the world, and regular play breaks, both indoors and outdoors. All the stuff that more privileged kids get, both at home and at school, without anybody consciously planning it.
I think if you do that, the standardized test scores probably take care of themselves, but it’s not the end of the world if they don’t, either.
Tops, a major supermarket chain, has managed to keep two supermarkets open inside Rochester city limits for decades. One is in the northeast, which Little_Nemo talked about, and one in the southwest. The former is now a heavily Latino neighborhood and the latter a black neighborhood, and the stores are geared to those clienteles.
I lived in the northeast until after college, mostly near the intersection of Joseph Ave and Clifford Ave (which is what Empire Blvd. turns into when it hits the city). But the northeast is a big place. Walking to the northeast Tops would have been a trek, especially coming back with the groceries. (And my mother had arthritis in her knees.) Taking a bus would have meant going downtown and getting a transfer. Again, difficult with a load of groceries.
Sustaining chain supermarkets can be done if the companies are willing to adapt their stores to fit the community and be willing to take a smaller profit margin. Wegmans, their much storied and far more locally successful competitor, closed down all of its smaller stores inside Rochester because they weren’t the money machines the huge suburban stores were. (One store remains, albeit at city limits, in the nicest area, and renovated into twice its former size.)
Chains can make these decisions. Nobody remembers today but A&P built itself into a byword by putting up thousands of stores across the country. L.A., IIRC, had 400. Each was 1000 sq. ft. That’s not a typo. They were 20’x50’ storefronts. They sold mostly canned foods, though, with some fresh goods, not exactly the model to break a food desert. Their size enabled them to lower prices and still make money, so much money that states starting passing laws banning chains. It became a huge issue during the Depression.
Anyway, low-price bare-bones chains with smaller stores and fresh foods like Aldi and Price Rite are starting to move into cities (there’s two of each in Rochester). Price Rite is a spin-off from the supermarket chain ShopRite. Small size spin-offs that get the buying power of a big chain but can cut prices with fewer frills may be the way in. Independents without that clout find it difficult to compete. Where the sweet size is that allows walking instead of driving hasn’t been found yet, though.
And of course I’m talking about cities. Rural food deserts obviously require cars and they’re a different case to crack.
I can testify that a great percentage of the annoyance I’ve inflicted on this message board over these years had its genesis in the libraries gifted by Andrew Carnegie.
May we all be annoying for many years to come.
::raises tepid coffee::
Relevant to the discussion:
I was still just like me when I was poor, only without the money I had before and after I was poor. But thanks for stereotyping people.
But why ask a (formerly) poor person what the biggest obstacles to becoming a non-poor person are? I mean, what could I possibly know?
I’m not even the only Doper who’s been poor.
Maybe the first thing that should be done with charity billions is ask/survey various sorts of poor people to find out what they think their biggest problems are?