Smalltown America finds ecstasy at Dollar General

I love dollar stores, and so does rural America. Dollar General, in particular, is cleaning up in the towns so out of the way even Wal-Mart can't make business there.

The Decatur store is one of 1,000 Dollar Generals opening this year as part of the $22 billion chains plan to expand rapidly in poor, rural communities where it has come to represent not decline but economic resurgence, or at least survival. ... Already, there are 14,000 one-story cinder block Dollar Generals ... Fold in the second-biggest dollar chain, Dollar Tree, and the number of stores, 27,465, exceeds the 22,375 outlets of CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens combined.

A quote not to be missed, from a real estate analyst:

Essentially what the dollar stores are betting on in a large way is that we are going to have a permanent underclass in America. Its based on the concept that the jobs went away, and the jobs are never coming back, and that things arent going to get better in any of these places.

Many cries of "Walmart fucked us" coming from smalltown America.