This place is such a circus this year, they only need to sell bread.
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Sure, I’m not saying they WANT welfare. But for many, it’s what’s keeping them alive, and it’s government help, and they claim to hate the government. Even though they’d be dead without the government.
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Sidenote: Dollar General is owned by the family from “Little House on the Prairie.”
Excuse me, European here. Can someone explain me what this store chain is about? I had a quick look at the web site, they only appear to sell non-perishable items. For food, they appear to only have processed or caned food. The price also appear to be higher to what I pay in Europe.
The various dollar store chains originally sold all their items for one USD or less. The goods are mainly manufactured in Asia (this 99% Invisible podcast on the topic is worth listening to). The price points have changed over the years, but the name stuck.
The merchandise tends to be shoddy and disposable, although sometimes that’s enough to do the job (party decorations or paper plates don’t need to last forever). You’re correct about the food items – it’s a lot of dodgy off-brand stuff or brand-name packaged foods that seem to have originated in other, mostly Asian and South American, markets.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices are higher than what Europeans pay, as some of these chains (like many businesses in the U.S.) are designed to extract as much money as possible from poor people while making it seem as if they’re getting bargains.
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We have the equivalent of dollar stores, but they indeed sell China-built junk at 1€ a piece. They don’t usually sell food items. I rarely visit them, as they don’t sell anything I would need, so I am not quite sure. They indeed extract as much money as possible from poor people while making it seem as if they’re getting bargains.
We also have chains selling off-brand food. They are mostly German chains (Aldi, Lidl…). They mostly sell groceries, not much hardware. From a quick look at their web site, Dollar General would appear noticeably more expensive. Yet our discount chains make large profits, so I am a bit surprised. Maybe it is just an effect of the exchange rate.
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Sure, it’s what’s keeping them alive, but that doesn’t mean they can’t resent it. There is a trait (sometimes just personal, often cultural) that abhors helpless dependence. The kind that would vote against basic income in a heartbeat because they think being given things is, essentially, immoral.
This also has a flip side where what they do take as granted they transmogrify in their minds as something they own. Hence “Government hands off my medicare.”
Funnily enough, you can see midcentury futurists worrying about this sort of thing: about how automation will shorten the workweek so much that mass malaise of those incapable of highly sought-after creative work will be a serious societal problem. I even remember turn of the century futurists laughing at them.
Odd, really, how these things work out.
Anyway, my point is that there’s a fairly large segment of society that’s turning into single-issue voters who will always vote for the return of How Things Used To Be which means that they’ll always vote for liars since anyone who promises that the manufacturing and resource extraction &c strong union jobs with nice salaries are coming back is on par with a used car salescreature.
There’s a scene in the Wire, second season, where the dockworkers are listening to some presentation about the possible revitalization of the docks and it all looks like gravy except the presenter lets it slip how many people the modern state-of-the-art system employs and it is something like a tenth of what they expected.
The jobs haven’t just moved to China or where have you. They are gone.
And we aren’t just not solving the massive economical[1] and social[2] issues this causes. We’re pretending they don’t exist.
[1] Such as the collapse of aggregate demand and the hyperfinancialization of investments.
[2] In whole swathes of the world the identity of adults is bound up intrinsically with what they do. To be permanently jobless is to be nobody.
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Thanks, that’s a great post. Lots to think about, there.
I read on another website that people don’t want facts and analysis, they want stories and mythologies. Trump and Hannity give them stories and mythologies, and they don’t care if they are true or not. As an accountant, I prefer facts and analysis, but I realize those things are boring.
Much obliged. 
And, though I risk sounding appallingly pretentious, there’s a Nietzsche quote[1] this puts me in mind of: “We possess art lest we perish of the truth.” The story and myth being sold is needed and wanting things to make sense as a story is as natural a human desire as any. It’s not for nothing that some wags have professed a wish to rename us all from Homo sapiens to Pan narrans.
The problem isn’t that people wish to comprehend what has become of them and the world they thought they knew through mythopoesis. The problem is dishonest myth-makers.
[1] Will to Power, fragment 822. Though my copy of his transcribed notebooks has in it most of the fragment, but not this zinger. Curious. I’d appreciate an assist from someone who knows more about this than I do, which, I realize, is quite a wide category.
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We drive a lot, both for fun and for footage for some eventual documentary. One of the voiceover lines for the trailer for the Route 20 part will be about how you drive at 55 for a while, then go down to 45 at the Dollar General, which means you’re coming to a town.
It’s become an iconic part of the roadside on old US highways.
In our area, we have Dollar General and Aldi, as well as a Dollar Tree and at least 2 dozen thrift/secondhand stores. All of them serve up cheap stuff for poor people (or frugal people). They all do it differently, though. Our Aldi is my favorite grocery store, because it sells off-brand and store-brand really cheaply, and sometimes it tastes like the name-brand used to taste before they started using cheaper ingredients, which is a pleasant surprise. The Dollar General is where you buy stuff when you move and need sheets, towels, and a dish drainer and it’s walking distance and the Target is a hour away by two buses. The Dollar Tree sells everything for a dollar or less, and is where you get party supplies, holiday gifts for the nieces and nephews you only see at Christmas, and packs of green scrubbies for a quarter of anyone’s sale price. The thrift & secondhand stores sell clothing and home furnishings.
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