You are deliberately ignoring the real reason stores are closing. Crime / unabated and unprosecuted theft. There are intentionally no deterrents anymore. Period. End Of Story.
You ended your story a little early.
A) Scott's anecdote is from decades ago, the mass shoplifting trend is recent. And the food desert problem has been an item of discussion for decades as well.B) I've lived in food deserts.
I've been part of well-meaning but misguided (and doomed) attempts at alleviating them. In the end the people buying the food have all the power, and the solutions have to work for their needs and circumstances. It's the height of arrogance to impose a solution that they have demonstrated doesn't work for them. The boutique food model that works for trust fund kids in Brooklyn doesn't work in the barrio or skid row, and I find the hostility toward low-end retailers appallingly patronizing and classist.
A) I know that.
B) I have too, in Cleveland and less than 20 years ago, not to mention having worked a cash register in one way or another for well over 55 years.
Regarding A) This is the cycle of urban decay. This would be the third in my lifetime. The first began with The Watts Riots in 1965 of which I have memories with my parents at the fringes. They were house hunting in the OC staying at my Grandmother's house in Long Beach. Six blocks away, 6 packs of empty coke bottles were being filled with gas at the pumps for making Molotov Cocktails. They had to wait to get out of there because they were shooting at planes flying in and out of LAX. The second was the Rodney King incident in 1992 and now we are in the third after George Floyd of which we are in the middle of.
The mass shoplifting is a new twist as you state, yet the result is the same as before. Crime is the last straw that will make business say enough is enough and walk away from their operations in certain areas. At first, it is one or two in an area. This time around it is turning into a stampede.
I have to disagree with your statement that ones buying the food have all of the power, when in the end these people are left behind in these abandoned areas with nowhere nearby to spend their money. Those with the means to escape, both businesses and residents leave. Those still stuck there and unable to leave are left with a festering mess. They have money, enough to survive at some level, but must travel far away to a safer place to spend it.
I don't know how we have a heavy discussion like this subject would require here at RP. It is a worthy discussion but this thread is certainly not the place. And I doubt that few could be serious about it for very long, if at all. Like how long would it take for Ronald to show up for example ?
I dunno. The future does not look good anytime soon. This time the anarchists might actually win. They are so far.
I have no issue with the low end retailers. I have an issue with the quality available at them. Sure you won't get heirloom tomatoes on your arugula salad with artisan balsamic dressing, but the pre-packaged food industry is a lot of crap, and it's more about profit than decent nutrition. I love it when we go south and I can go to the local fruit/veggie place every other day and spend 3-5$ on a couple bags of fresh stuff.
I recall farmstands all over long island growing up in the 70s, which started to disappear in the 80s, especially as the family farms got bought out for commercial and residential real estate.
These days, its a supply (fewer family farms) and demand issue...at least limited demand for the probably 4-5x price for a couple bags of fresh stuff in the states.
It is funny how many conservatives who for decades fought for unregulated business are now complaining about the lack of main streets and domestic manufacturing.
But then again, and to Lazy's point, its about giving the people what they want...people had/have a demand for large quantities of cheap goods, durable and consumable.
You ended your story a little early. Scott's anecdote is from decades ago, the mass shoplifting trend is recent. And the food desert problem has been an item of discussion for decades as well.
I've lived in food deserts. I've been part of well-meaning but misguided (and doomed) attempts at alleviating them. In the end the people buying the food have all the power, and the solutions have to work for their needs and circumstances. It's the height of arrogance to impose a solution that they have demonstrated doesn't work for them.
The boutique food model that works for trust fund kids in Brooklyn doesn't work in the barrio or skid row, and I find the hostility toward low-end retailers appallingly patronizing and classist.
I have no issue with the low end retailers. I have an issue with the quality available at them. Sure you won't get heirloom tomatoes on your arugula salad with artisan balsamic dressing, but the pre-packaged food industry is a lot of crap, and it's more about profit than decent nutrition. I love it when we go south and I can go to the local fruit/veggie place every other day and spend 3-5$ on a couple bags of fresh stuff.
You are deliberately ignoring the real reason stores are closing. Crime / unabated and unprosecuted theft. There are intentionally no deterrents anymore. Period. End Of Story.
You ended your story a little early. Scott's anecdote is from decades ago, the mass shoplifting trend is recent. And the food desert problem has been an item of discussion for decades as well.
I've lived in food deserts. I've been part of well-meaning but misguided (and doomed) attempts at alleviating them. In the end the people buying the food have all the power, and the solutions have to work for their needs and circumstances. It's the height of arrogance to impose a solution that they have demonstrated doesn't work for them.
The boutique food model that works for trust fund kids in Brooklyn doesn't work in the barrio or skid row, and I find the hostility toward low-end retailers appallingly patronizing and classist.
You are deliberately ignoring the real reason stores are closing. Crime / unabated and unprosecuted theft. There are intentionally no deterrents anymore. Period. End Of Story.
Kurt, you need to step away from the anger machines that provide your news and add a hint of skepticism to the issues you're addressing.
Food access is not a crime-ridden city problem. It's worst in RED states. It's not Illinois, New York, and California where food deserts are an issue, it's Texas and Florida (ranked #1 and #2 in total population).
Sure, someone walking into a Walgreens and walking out with whatever they like is a problem, but it's not THE problem for everything. Conservative media has you conditioned, and you don't have a clue how stupid you sound.
Go learn something about low-income and low-access food locations (ie deserts) in the US. The data is slightly dated, but if you use the breadcrumbs at the top of the page to look around, you'll see things are still much worse in locations that voted for Trump in 2016/2020 than they are in "lib controlled cities".
Did your liquor store run the supermarket out of business, or did it step in to fill a void? If your liquor store had been shut down—for the residents' own good, of course—would that have brought the supermarket back? If a supermarket isn't meeting the needs of its customers it won't stay in business. If a Dollar General isn't meeting the needs of its customers it won't stay in business. Those customers had needs that weren't being met. Someone stepped in to meet them. Good on them. Preventing them from meeting those needs does not mean that they will suddenly start buying organic arugula from Whole Foods, it means the food desert will get even drier.
You are deliberately ignoring the real reason stores are closing. Crime / unabated and unprosecuted theft. There are intentionally no deterrents anymore. Period. End Of Story.
So the complaint is that people choose unhealthy options rather than buying healthy food. I know when I lived in Oakland, the local supermarket that had been around for 50 years closed up. The population that had been squarely in the postwar middle class had slid into being mostly below the poverty line. Any value shopper will get the Fuji apples and not Honeycrisp, flank steak and not ribeye, whole chicken and not boneless skinless breasts. Generics and not name brands. Might all be the same healthwise, but the store needs to sell ribeyes to stay in business. So they shut down and the next closest store was a Safeway 30 blocks away. So instead of going there, people had to come shop at the liquor store I worked at. Dinty Moore stew, hotdogs and bacon. We had eggs and milk but no produce, no fresh or frozen meat. Head cheese! That store closed and we started getting ALL the food stamps. Nobody chose that diet.
Did your liquor store run the supermarket out of business, or did it step in to fill a void? If your liquor store had been shut down—for the residents' own good, of course—would that have brought the supermarket back?
If a supermarket isn't meeting the needs of its customers it won't stay in business. If a Dollar General isn't meeting the needs of its customers it won't stay in business.
Those customers had needs that weren't being met. Someone stepped in to meet them. Good on them. Preventing them from meeting those needs does not mean that they will suddenly start buying organic arugula from Whole Foods, it means the food desert will get even drier.
So the complaint is that people choose unhealthy options rather than buying healthy food. I know when I lived in Oakland, the local supermarket that had been around for 50 years closed up. The population that had been squarely in the postwar middle class had slid into being mostly below the poverty line. Any value shopper will get the Fuji apples and not Honeycrisp, flank steak and not ribeye, whole chicken and not boneless skinless breasts. Generics and not name brands. Might all be the same healthwise, but the store needs to sell ribeyes to stay in business. So they shut down and the next closest store was a Safeway 30 blocks away.
So instead of going there, people had to come shop at the liquor store I worked at. Dinty Moore stew, hotdogs and bacon. We had eggs and milk but no produce, no fresh or frozen meat. Head cheese! That store closed and we started getting ALL the food stamps. Nobody chose that diet.
This is the scenario that I am talking about. Watched it play out here in Cleveburg and also in Akron. There are no liquor stores in Ohio. Here it was little corner stores in neighborhoods that were generally run by 1st generation immigrants and predominantly Arabs in the black neighborhoods. This caused a whole new set of tensions and distrust. The store owners gradually became accused of predatory pricing, robberies came next, some stores got torched and eventually these options gave up as well.
It took a whole lot of arm twisting of the grocery chains, in the form of tax abatements, assurances of beefed up policing and other giveaways to get these stores to return. Slowly over about 10 years it worked. We are now repeating the same policies that let these neighborhoods fall apart with rising crime and the process is repeating itself. This time it is different as shoplifting is now no longer considered a crime worth prosecuting because (the excuse is) it is racist to go after the criminals. Look at San Fran as ground zero this time around and it's not just grocery stores. It is drug stores and department stores. This is more than about food deserts. They are becoming retail deserts.
There are a number of definitions of "food deserts" depending on who you ask. Some can be areas of large cities which may have crime among the causes which grocery stores don't stick around, but I think what SD was getting at was the Dollar Stores, which seem to pop up in food deserts - often in rural areas. For example, in many parts of NC (and much of the South in general), Dollar Stores show up as free-standing structures, or as part of small strip malls. Grocery chains like Kroger, Harris-Teeter, Food Lion, etc., apparently don't see it as worthwhile to open in many of those areas, so the residents either have to drive 10 miles or more to get to a grocery store, or even a Target or Wal-Mart. So the Dollar Stores - or fast food places - essentially become the only source of food for those folks - especially if they have limited access to transportation.
So the complaint is that people choose unhealthy options rather than buying healthy food. I know when I lived in Oakland, the local supermarket that had been around for 50 years closed up. The population that had been squarely in the postwar middle class had slid into being mostly below the poverty line. Any value shopper will get the Fuji apples and not Honeycrisp, flank steak and not ribeye, whole chicken and not boneless skinless breasts. Generics and not name brands. Might all be the same healthwise, but the store needs to sell ribeyes to stay in business. So they shut down and the next closest store was a Safeway 30 blocks away. So instead of going there, people had to come shop at the liquor store I worked at. Dinty Moore stew, hotdogs and bacon. We had eggs and milk but no produce, no fresh or frozen meat. Head cheese! That store closed and we started getting ALL the food stamps. Nobody chose that diet.
I could go deeper and explain the concept as I understand it, but it is S_D who brought up the term so maybe he should define it first.
I can explain it on the basis of being one of the few here who have recently actually lived in an impoverished big old rust belt big city. Cleveland is always in the top two as the poorest big cities in the US.
There are a number of definitions of "food deserts" depending on who you ask. Some can be areas of large cities which may have crime among the causes which grocery stores don't stick around, but I think what SD was getting at was the Dollar Stores, which seem to pop up in food deserts - often in rural areas. For example, in many parts of NC (and much of the South in general), Dollar Stores show up as free-standing structures, or as part of small strip malls. Grocery chains like Kroger, Harris-Teeter, Food Lion, etc., apparently don't see it as worthwhile to open in many of those areas, so the residents either have to drive 10 miles or more to get to a grocery store, or even a Target or Wal-Mart. So the Dollar Stores - or fast food places - essentially become the only source of food for those folks - especially if they have limited access to transportation.
This goes back to the late 80's early 90's. Think Rudy Giuliani. I guess that you're too young to remember.
Mostly I squinted when you said we recently recovered from a food desert. I sort of lost the thread after that. Here's a Reddit discussion that hits a lot of the points of what a food desert is, whether they exist, and whether it's a demand issue or a supply issue. The "demand" side has a lot of supporters there but anyway it's a good read even if a lot of the points made tend to sound pretty Trumpian to me.
I could go deeper and explain the concept as I understand it, but it is S_D who brought up the term so maybe he should define it first.
I can explain it on the basis of being one of the few here who have recently actually lived in an impoverished big old rust belt big city. Cleveland is always in the top two as the poorest big cities in the US.
This goes back to the late 80's early 90's. Think Rudy Giuliani.
I guess that you're too young to remember.
Mostly I squinted when you said we recently recovered from a food desert. I sort of lost the thread after that.
Here's a Reddit discussion that hits a lot of the points of what a food desert is, whether they exist, and whether it's a demand issue or a supply issue. The "demand" side has a lot of supporters there but anyway it's a good read even if a lot of the points made tend to sound pretty Trumpian to me.
Food deserts ? You mean like we just recently recovered from ? They are coming back for the same reason they happened before. Crime. Rampant crime brought to you by the same people who enabled it the last time around, using the same soft on crime policies they are encouraging today. So yeah, thanks, Joe and all your progressive buddies in your party. It is always someone else's fault. Defund the police and no cash bail are a republican thing, right ?
*squint* ?
This goes back to the late 80's early 90's. Think Rudy Giuliani.
Food deserts ? You mean like we just recently recovered from ?
They are coming back for the same reason they happened before. Crime.
Rampant crime brought to you by the same people who enabled it the last time around, using the same soft on crime policies they are encouraging today.
So yeah, thanks, Joe and all your progressive buddies in your party.
It is always someone else's fault. Defund the police and no cash bail are a republican thing, right ?
OK, class. Today weâre going to talk about skew lines, and how they donât intersect. Can anyone think of two things that have nothing to do with each other?
Yeah, shame on them for selling things poor people can afford! Shame on them for employing people selling those goods! If they had fewer choices of what to buy they'd be infinitely better off. It's not like they know what's in their own best interest.
Let them eat Target.
I agree, they serve a niche,
but they do have a reputation for poor and unsafe work environments,
as for their profits, margins are a bit higher than you might expect...a few percent higher than a typical grocer,
so I would argue they improve working conditions, rather than lower prices
*boy, this has turned into an unnecessary thread jack
:thumbsup:
