Jesse Jackson is still alive?
People still listen to what Jesse Jackson says?
Judging by this thread, white people engaged in recreational outrage pay a whole lot of attention.
I suppose recreational outrage is not as virtuous as professional outrage.
Because that would be insinuating that poor communities are poor in part because of the lifestyle and decision making of the inhabitants.
Thanks for participating. This thread is now less diverse than a Trump rally.
I can understand disagreeing with it. I personally don’t agree with this particular call for a boycott, and if I actually shopped at kroger, then I probably still would.
However, I do not see it as irrational for consumers to show their displeasure with choices made by companies that they patronize. It is one of the very few ways in which we as consumers have to affect companies. If I don’t like what they are doing, then I don’t have to support them. If I really don’t like what they are doing, I can ask that others not do so either.
I get what you are saying here, but I don’t agree. Not supporting a company because it is doing things that you don’t like doesn’t really increase the chances that other companies will do things that you don’t like. In fact, it increases the investment potential of other stores. If I am part of the kroger boycott because they closed these stores, and safeway opens a store in the area, I am going to reward safeway for their behavior, and change my krogering to safewaying.
This is not in the OP, or the link therein, and I must have missed the cite for this information posted in the thread. What stores are these?
You mean this?
While this thread is not about housing policy or food stamps, sure these are things that need to be looked into as well. Though your post is a bit self contradictory, as most of the discriminatory housing policy was the result of the free market, and it required govt intervention to make a dent in it, and it still goes on today. Also, EBT doesn’t do any good if you don’t have anywhere to shop.
You also seems to be pretty dismissive of housing policy and food stamps, what with referring to them as things that make liberal bits turgid, so I see that as more as an attempt at deflection than an honest attempt at furthering discussion.
Thank you.
No, it would be acknowledging that the free market is not perfect, and that it does leave some areas and peoples unserviced.
Who here has claimed the so-called free market is perfect?
The OP links to an article, which links to a second article, which lists the addresses of the two stores in question. Which you can find in your online map program of choice, which also allows you to find other grocery stores in the area. I figured it out without even activating my mad PhD skills. You can too.
I figured if JJ was ranting about something, he was probably wrong. So I went and looked and confirmed that. Which apparently nobody else posting in this thread bothered to do.
There are Save-a-Lots at 2258 Lamar and 1817 S 3rd.
You can boost those history skills at the library with books like Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. De jure segregation – it’s eye-opening and infuriating. I only just got it today from the library and haven’t finished yet.
And SNAP (I should have written that, not EBT) helps ensure your existing or potential future customers have the scratch to buy your stuff. Kinda hard to make money off of people who don’t have much. Businesses will open if they think they can make money. They won’t and existing ones will close if they think they can’t or when they actually don’t.
My bits, thankyouverymuch. Which are quite perky at the thought of righting past policy wrongs. Or current ones. And I’m quite happy to be taxed more to make sure people can buy food.
This is actually a pretty brilliant idea.
How would it be different from food stamps, or EBT?
Regards,
Shodan
It would be different because, if it worked like low-income housing mandates, it would require the supermarket chains to offer discounted food to a certain percentage of their customers, on a means-tested basis.
That is, instead of giving poor people food stamps or EBT cards, and letting them buy their food at market prices, it would mandate that supermarkets offer food at less-than-market prices to a certain population of people. presumably, these people would identify themselves with a government-issued card, or something similar.
To be honest, I’m not sure that this is a good way to deal with the problems associated with food prices and availability. For all of their problems, markets provide important information about supply and demand, and they respond to changes in supply and demand in reasonably predictable ways. Forcing people to provide goods outside of the market-dictated prices can be the result of good intentions, but it also often distorts markets in ways that can create significant problems.
For example, how would a system like that advocated by TruCelt work? And, perhaps more importantly, what problems might it bring with it? For example, say the system requires that supermarkets located in low-income neighborhoods sell their produce at cheaper prices. What’s to stop people who live in more prosperous neighborhoods from driving to those stores for cheaper food? I can afford to shop at my local Vons, but if I learned that the new Vons that just opened in the low-income neighborhood was selling the same food for a 20% discount, I’d probably be willing to make the drive for the cheaper food. And then I benefit from a government-mandated subsidy that I don’t really need.
And do you require that certain supermarkets (in certain areas) sell all their produce at discounted rates? Or do you simply mandate that all supermarkets, in all locations, sell at discounted rates to a particular subset of the population? Because if you choose the latter route, you still haven’t solved the central problem that we’re dealing with in this thread: the fact that some neighborhoods simply don’t have any supermarkets at all. And if that’s the case, do you want your system to mandate that chains open outlets in low-income neighborhoods?
I’m not arguing that these problems are insurmountable. I’m also not arguing that we shouldn’t provide ways for the poor to get access to reasonably priced and nutritious food. I simply think that there might be better ways to do it than this sort of mandate. For that matter, I also think there might be better ways of providing quality housing to low income people than implementing rent control or mandating a certain percentage of low-income units in new developments.
I’m a lefty, and in many ways something of a Democratic Socialist in a lot of my politics. I believe, for example, in universal healthcare, and more generally, I think that government has a significant role to play in alleviating poverty and inequality. At the same time, though, I recognize that every time government imposes itself in these areas, even when it does good things, it also distorts markets in ways that can have adverse effects. I’m no libertarian or anti-regulatory zealot, but I also think that the first question we on the left need to ask, when confronting situations like this, is: What is the best way to achieve our desired outcome with the least possible disruption to markets, and the lowest number of unintended consequences. The first question shouldn’t be “Can we add a regulation?” The first question should be: “Should we add a regulation?” In more complex terms, we should be asking: “What’s the best way to achieve the desired outcomes with the fewest unintended consequences? What are the best positive (in the scientific sense) steps we can take to achieve our normative goals?”
For example, there are multiple studies showing that, while rent control and low-income housing mandates do, in fact, provide more housing for poor people, they also tend to raise the market price of non-regulated housing (often substantially), which often screws people who are still poor, but not poor enough to qualify for rent control, and also people in the middle income brackets. Furthermore, by constraining rental income, such regulations give landlords incentive not to improve their properties or fix dilapidated housing units. After all, if putting in new windows or better electrical wiring or more efficient appliances or nicer floors won’t allow you to increase your income, you have no incentive to do those things. This leads to rent controlled housing that is, in some cases, on the verge of being uninhabitable.
What some economists argue is that, if we’re going to help people offset the challenges they face in the market, the best way to do it is to give them plain old cash and let them spend it in the market, making their own decisions about where to live. Milton Friedman, the famous free-market economist, made pretty much this argument with his call for “negative taxation.” Instead of setting up massive government bureaucracies that allocate resources over the whole nation, why not simply give money to the people who need it, and let them spend it in the marketplace? This allows for better individual and local control (based on the not-unreasonable assumption that the needs and priorities of a person living in Dayton or Boise are different from those of a person living in Los Angeles or Chicago), and it also inserts fewer distorting effects into the marketplace.
Bringing all of that back to the topic at hand, I think it might be better to simply increase the food stamp or EBT allowances rather than try to force supermarket chains to sell food at different prices to different groups of people. If poor people have more to spend on food, then grocery stores are more likely to open in their neighborhoods. And if we find that there are still food deserts in some areas, it might actually be cheaper and more efficient to provide transportation subsidies or something similar that allows poor people to go to where the food is, rather than to introduce a “low priced supermarket” mandate. Or, as Friedman and some other free market economists suggest, just give needy people money and let them spend it in ways that make sense for them.
Are there problems with such a system? Absolutely. No system of welfare or economic assistance or poverty reduction or inequality alleviation is ever going to work perfectly.
JJ goes on the road again.
I still don’t see much difference. With food stamps or EBT, the government is subsidizing the consumer directly. With this discount idea, the consumer still gets subsidized, but either the government reimburses the store for selling at a discount, or doesn’t, in which case it doesn’t address the issue that the store can’t make a profit, which is just cost-shifting.
This is true, if the problem is that poor people don’t have the money to spend at Kroger. But then the boycott isn’t going to do any good - if the poor don’t have the money, they aren’t going to shop at Kroger even if they keep the store open.
And if the problem is not that they don’t have money, but that prices are higher because of shop-lifting and the increased need for store security, or that it is a high-crime neighborhood and they don’t want to shop there even if they have the money, more money isn’t going to help.
Regards,
Shodan
The closed Walnut Hills shop is replaced by another one 1.3 miles away. $3.50 round trip on the bus. Half that if you’re old or disabled. The new location is in a zip code with a lower household income than the zip code with the closed store ($21,500 vs $24,700).
My understanding of TruCelt’s suggestion is that grocery retailers would be required to build and maintain stores - possibly money-losing stores - in low-income/food desert neighborhoods. I assume this would work best on the state level.
Maybe she meant something else, but the problem we’re talking about in this thread isn’t the cost of food per se, but the availability of food. So it would be different from EBT/food stamps in that we’re not talking about discounting or subsidizing food.
So, for example, if Major Grocery Chain wants to build a new store in West High End Suburb, it would also have to agree to open a store in Inner City Community in order to obtain planning/zoning permission. They could be given a small subsidy to offset losses on the low-income-area store, and potentially a greater subsidy for hiring local workers, etc.
We do this in lots of other industries, like - as noted - property development, where X number of rental units must be set aside for low-income housing. Another similar example os local utility monopolies (utility gets legal monopoly in exchange for guaranteeing universal service and fixed pricing). Or, you can look at the insurance industry; most states require insurers to provide certain forms of low margin coverage in exchange for the right to offer more profitable insurance products. For example, in Florida, insurers must offer homeowners’ insurance in order to write certain other policy types.
I think this is a specific issue in which regulation of this type would be warranted, because there is no market-based force which would solve the food desert problem.
Well yes of course it is. Unfortunately that’s now how it actually works here as far as I can tell. Our communities are great for candle-lit memorials but the crime in this area is so heavy and police are so poorly paid all they’re good for is picking up pieces. Here lately people are getting shot at those memorials too. It’s just not safe for anyone here.
And the crime isn’t just NEAR the store. It’s IN the store, IN the parking lot, and sometimes it’s employees doing it or letting it happen.
OK, thanks - that’s clearer.
Why would it need to be tied to the construction of another store? Just offer subsidies sufficient to make the inner city store profitable, and then anyone who wants to can open up the store.
The subsidies could be indirect - guarantee a police presence in and around the store to deal with the location in a higher-crime district. But they would have to be ongoing - once they are withdrawn, the store is back at the mercies of the market. If they can make a go of it without subsidies, fine, otherwise they will close anyway.
The Sav-A-Lots in the area are going to ask why they don’t get subsidized, of course, and I can’t think of a good reason why Kroger gets subsidies but another store a mile away has to sink or swim on their own. Maybe Jesse Jackson knows.
I am not sure how it is a problem - not enough people value not living in a food desert to shop at Kroger’s, therefore we need to keep the Kroger’s around so not enough people will shop there. Or subsidize Kroger’s so that they continue in that location so that not enough people will shop there.
Regards,
Shodan
You’re stirring memories of the Stop & Shop in New Haven.
They’re really not even that far from other Krogers. But yes there is a Sav-A-Lot in the same center as one of the Krogers closing Looking at a map of the areas I see that store, Superlo, Aldi, and a few local stores.
How stupid is it to call for a boycott of stores that are apparently so bloody necessary? He’s going to get MORE poor black people to not go to their local Kroger in order to protest two stores closing? It makes no sense at all.
Since some people are arguing for a state solution to the problem, why not just have the state acquire and operate a Kroger franchise in the afflicted area. If there are legal hurdles I’m sure they can be legislated away. After all, there are more than a few states that restrict alcohol sales to state operated stores.