# STFU Jesse Jackson **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 5, 2018, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839 "2018-04-05T00:18:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/61 "2018-04-07T22:37:01Z")
Is Cincinnati so remote to not have grocery delivery? Jesse Jackson has always been a pathetic fool trying to seek attention. But, we remember him more for his corrupt son and his laughable presidential campaigns. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2018, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/62 "2018-04-07T22:43:14Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > But the chain that owned it shouldn’t have to keep it open when they were not making it profitable. I don’t think anybody here is saying that a chain should _have_ to keep unprofitable stores open, in the sense of being legally forced to. But consumers are entirely within their rights to decide to boycott them if they don’t. The larger issue, as I noted before, is that free-market ideology in our society leads us to oppose government intervention in situations like this because we think _“oh, the market will handle the problem more efficiently by means of for-profit businesses”_. And then when for-profit businesses **don’t** handle the problem successfully, we act like it’s unfair for consumers to criticize or punish them for their failure. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/63 "2018-04-08T00:51:38Z")
Those who don’t like how Kroger is operating are welcome to open their own money-losing grocery store in its place. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/64 "2018-04-08T06:17:51Z")
I guess I’m fortunate to not live in a food desert, because I’m too poor to shop at Kroger except for a handful of things I know they always have on sale. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/65 "2018-04-08T06:50:20Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > It has nothing to do with food choices and has all to do with food availability. Yeah, you’re wrong. Or, at a minimum, wildly over-simplifying. There are, without a doubt, some actual food deserts in the United States, but research has shown that they’re not as common as many people believe. [This article](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/time-to-revisit-food-deserts/?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=C0C8052F12E09649439B60BD17320832&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion) provides a nice overview of some of the research on the subject. [This study](https://sites.duke.edu/olgakozlova/files/2016/10/jmp_okozlova.pdf) (PDF), which was published less than two years ago, notes that “Recent empirical studies on nutritional disparities suggest that food access alone cannot account for the differences in nutritional quality across income.” The author’s literature review related to the issue of food deserts, and the way that income impacts nutritional choice, notes the following results from academic studies: > [@](#): > > Recently, a complete picture of the effect of food access and product quality choice has emerged. Cummins et al. (2014) study the effect of the entry of a supermarket in a food desert, as part of the Philadelphia Fresh Food Financing Initiative, on nutritional quality using a difference-in-difference method. They find no effect of increased food access on the purchases of nutritional food (as measured by fruit and vegetable purchases) in the six months following the supermarket opening. Using Nielsen scanner data, Handbury et al. (2015) show that food access plays a limited role in explaining nutritional disparities, and nutritional disparities between low- and high-income ouseholds persist when conditioning on the retailer. Finally, they show that changing the retail environment (e.g., the entry of a new store) does not change the nutritional quality of a low-income household’s purchased bundle. These papers reach similar conclusions to Kozlova (2016), who also shows that within-product quality choice is important. Finally, Michele and Rahkivsky (2016) use Nielsen scanner data and the FoodAPS dataset to show that (a) when households travel further, they buy only slightly better food, and (b) lowincome households are more sensitive to prices than to the distance to a store. > > pp. 4-5 Also: > [@](#): > > An alternative explanation of food insecurity in low-income households is that the long-term habits of households form the preferences of food choice, suggesting that a budget increase alone cannot improve the diet quality of households. This has been confirmed in empirical studies on habits of households. Bronnenberg et al. (2012) analyze households across all income groups in the U.S. and find that brand preferences are highly persistent over individuals’ lifetimes and are particularly important in food categories with high levels of advertising. > > p. 6 ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/66 "2018-04-08T10:55:05Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Those who don’t like how Kroger is operating are welcome to open their own money-losing grocery store in its place. They are also free to complain how they are being fucked by a company that gave its CEO a 20% pay raise in 2016. Even though the former CEO commented of his compensation, “While I don’t really defend that amount, it even seems ludicrous to me.” Poor people, fuck them, right? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/67 "2018-04-08T12:13:29Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > They are also free to complain how they are being fucked by a company that gave its CEO a 20% pay raise in 2016. Even though the former CEO commented of his compensation, “While I don’t really defend that amount, it even seems ludicrous to me.” If they’re fucked by Kroger deciding not to operate there then they’re fucked by you deciding not to operate there. Anyone is free to complain about anything, no matter how idiotic it is to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/68 "2018-04-08T12:26:10Z")
Let’s punish Kroger by shopping instead at stores that have made the same business decision! ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/69 "2018-04-08T13:00:02Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > If they’re fucked by Kroger deciding not to operate there then they’re fucked by you deciding not to operate there. Anyone is free to complain about anything, no matter how idiotic it is to do so. I think the fact that Kroger was there, and decided not to be, is a sliiiightly different situation than my never even thought about opening a store there. Sort of like how it’s unfortunate when a smart person loses their edge, like when Pierre Salinger went from being a top aide to John F. Kennedy to being a crazy person; but people look at you and your capabilities and say, “Meh, he never had it to begin with.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/70 "2018-04-08T13:38:13Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Those who don’t like how Kroger is operating are welcome to open their own money-losing grocery store in its place. This is exactly the sort of hypocritical market-fundamentalism bait-and-switch that I was objecting to in my previous post. If we as a society are going to take the approach that ensuring the availability of healthy food to poor people with limited access to stores outside their immediate neighborhoods is best left up to the free market, then we need to acknowledge it when the free-market approach fails. The failure of Kroger (and other supermarket chains) to maintain profitable stores in these neighborhoods reflects a failure of the free market to serve a particular social need. It is hypocritical for free-market advocates to respond to this failure by just shrugging and sneering that it was unrealistic to expect the market to succeed at serving that need in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![BombVoyage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BombVoyage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BombVoyage)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/71 "2018-04-08T13:44:04Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > :dubious: Well, when conservatives/rightists refuse to accept any “socialized policies” for government to solve the problems, the only other power capable of tackling them **is** the capitalist corporations. > > ISTM that the real irony is when the conservatives/rightists reject “socialized policies” on the grounds that the good old invisible hand of the free market will solve the problems much more efficiently and productively—and then when the market finds it unprofitable to do so and nopes on out of there, the conservatives/rightists whine that it “simply can’t be done” and it was unfair to expect it in the first place. :rolleyes: OMG! THIS!!! Whenever I get drug into a conversation like this, the old “The invisible hand solves all” tripe comes up. When I point out failures, like this, they then say exactly what you say. They refuse to see that the INVISIBLE HAND FAILED! It doesn’t matter why it failed. It most often is not the corporations fault it failed…BUT IT FAILED! Therefore, “socialized policies” are needed. However, when you bring that up… ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/72 "2018-04-08T13:56:05Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I think the fact that Kroger was there, and decided not to be, is a sliiiightly different situation than my never even thought about opening a store there. At least they tried. Now other stores know not to. Because if they do and it doesn’t work out, they’ll be even worse off. Good job! ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/73 "2018-04-08T14:05:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > If we as a society are going to take the approach that ensuring the availability of healthy food to poor people with limited access to stores outside their immediate neighborhoods is best left up to the free market, then we need to acknowledge it when the free-market approach fails. Except we didn’t get here with a free market. Decades of discriminatory housing policy, zoning that decreases availability and increases prices where the jobs are, etc., etc. So if you want to talk housing policy or food stamps or all the other wonderful things that make my liberal bits turgid, knock yourself out. But boycotting Kroger is stupid. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/74 "2018-04-08T14:06:37Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > This is exactly the sort of hypocritical market-fundamentalism bait-and-switch that I was objecting to in my previous post. > > If we as a society are going to take the approach that ensuring the availability of healthy food to poor people with limited access to stores outside their immediate neighborhoods is best left up to the free market, then we need to acknowledge it when the free-market approach fails. > > The failure of Kroger (and other supermarket chains) to maintain profitable stores in these neighborhoods reflects a failure of the free market to serve a particular social need. It is hypocritical for free-market advocates to respond to this failure by just shrugging and sneering that it was unrealistic to expect the market to succeed at serving that need in the first place. So well said. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/75 "2018-04-08T15:08:56Z")
> [@UCBearcats](#): > > Nothing I need to do about the grocery store issue. **It doesn’t directly effect me.** I do things in my area to support local businesses and help them remain in the community. And that demonstrates the real problem. You very much do need to do things about situations that don’t directly affect you. In fact, only doing things that directly affect you is selfishness and harmful to society as a whole. It all goes back to why we have a society in the first place: we’re stronger together than separate. We need to cooperate to make everyone better. We can’t have the people who have more only looking out for themselves. Jackson seems to get that. He’s rather rich, but he’s still trying to help these poor people. It doesn’t affect him directly, but he’s doing something. You are condemning him for doing something. Kroger is not the victim here. Kroger has a lot of money and is making a substantial profit. Kroger can afford to take a hit to keep those other stores going. But they chose not to. It’s not like they’re a business that is struggling–then it might be justified. And a boycott is a time-tested way to try and provide negative consequences to selfish companies that do things that harm communities in order to support their bottom line. Jackson has a podium, so he’s using it. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/76 "2018-04-08T15:23:37Z")
So Big of you, BigT, to advocate someone _else_ lose money on a business venture. JJ is using his podium to ask people to take their grocery shopping dollars to other companies that also are not operating a business in that neighborhood. Which is worthy of mockery. ---
**Author:** ![UCBearcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/77aa72/32.png) [@UCBearcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UCBearcats)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/77 "2018-04-08T15:35:15Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And that demonstrates the real problem. You very much do need to do things about situations that don’t directly affect you. In fact, only doing things that directly affect you is selfishness and harmful to society as a whole. > > It all goes back to why we have a society in the first place: we’re stronger together than separate. We need to cooperate to make everyone better. We can’t have the people who have more only looking out for themselves. > > Jackson seems to get that. He’s rather rich, but he’s still trying to help these poor people. It doesn’t affect him directly, but he’s doing something. You are condemning him for doing something. > > Kroger is not the victim here. Kroger has a lot of money and is making a substantial profit. Kroger can afford to take a hit to keep those other stores going. But they chose not to. It’s not like they’re a business that is struggling–then it might be justified. > > And a boycott is a time-tested way to try and provide negative consequences to selfish companies that do things that harm communities in order to support their bottom line. Jackson has a podium, so he’s using it. The loss of a store in Memphis doesn’t directly effect me. If a similar situation occurred in the Detroit area I would be concerned. That is were I put my time and effort into helping local businesses succeed. A similar thing could happen the Memphis area that Kroger is leaving. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/78 "2018-04-08T16:01:47Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > So Big of you, BigT, to advocate someone _else_ lose money on a business venture… Yeah, as I related earlier, the last two CEOs of Kroger’s were really on the verge of being so broke they’d have to move into a neighborhood with no Kroger’s. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/79 "2018-04-08T16:02:21Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > This is exactly the sort of hypocritical market-fundamentalism bait-and-switch that I was objecting to in my previous post. > > If we as a society are going to take the approach that ensuring the availability of healthy food to poor people with limited access to stores outside their immediate neighborhoods is best left up to the free market, then we need to acknowledge it when the free-market approach fails. > > The failure of Kroger (and other supermarket chains) to maintain profitable stores in these neighborhoods reflects a failure of the free market to serve a particular social need. It is hypocritical for free-market advocates to respond to this failure by just shrugging and sneering that it was unrealistic to expect the market to succeed at serving that need in the first place. I completely agree with you about basically everything you’ve said here. The problem is that the appropriate solution to this particular free-market failure is not, in my opinion, to put in place some sort of government mandate that one particular private enterprise be held responsible for correcting the problem and forced to maintain a money-losing enterprise. If the free market has failed in some areas of nutrition availability in the United States (and the citations I gave earlier suggest that “food deserts” are not quite as common as some people believe), then the burden of dealing with this problem falls on all of us, not just on Kroger. To force one particular organization to stay in business and lose money, as some have suggested, is not only unfair on a general level, it would almost certainly be ruled unconstitutional by even the most liberal justices in the federal court system. I agree wholeheartedly with my fellow leftists that we can’t leave everything to the market. Where I part from them, on occasion, is that there are too many people on the left whose solutions to the failure of market forces often cause as many problems as they solve. We don’t have to bow before market forces, but we should recognize that the way markets work provides us with important information about people’s choices and preferences, and that every interference in the market comes with consequences. Sometimes those consequences can work against the very goals we were seeking when we interfered with the market in the first place. Also, while I’m always perfectly happy to criticize corporations that behave irresponsibly and unethically, I’m not sure that picking on individual corporations and making them responsible for fixing broader market failures is the right solution to the problem. Kroger has stores in these neighborhoods; many other retailers do not. These stores are no longer profitable, according to Kroger. Does anyone really think they’re lying about this? Why would they want to close profitable stores? Surely no-one is arguing that this is a conspiracy to keep food away from poor people? Forcing them to keep running unprofitable stores would be little more than a discriminatory tax aimed at one particular company. That’s not how we should be solving social problems like this. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839/80 "2018-04-08T16:03:36Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yeah, as I related earlier, the last two CEOs of Kroger’s were really on the verge of being so broke they’d have to move into a neighborhood with no Kroger’s. Probably because they weren’t opening stores that lose money. ETA or that they closed ones that did [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stfu-jesse-jackson/811839.md?page=5)