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The entire big box economy is a big honking subsidy to people with cars living in the suburbs by the poor, the singles, the seniors, the urban, the cyclists.
It only works because of the highways and the parking lots and the infrastructure paid for by everyone (road taxes do not cover the cost of the roads) and enjoyed by the drivers. The companies charge twice as much for small packages as big ones because they can; the purchasers without cars and access to the big boxes, the ability to drive between the Walmart and the Costco and the Price Club, don't have a choice.
Read on for Treehugger's reasons. Is bulk buying bad after all?
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Does Buying in Bulk Save Money, or is it a False Economy?
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reintarnation:
Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday September 29 2017, @05:57AM (1 child)
It varies with the case, obviously. Expecting specifics on this when speaking generally about the circumstance is absurd.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 29 2017, @01:19PM
For example, there's been some real ugly problems due to the subsidizing of US student loans (so that more people would have a college degree which is generally considered a good thing) such as education inflation over the past half century at several times the natural inflation rate and special non-dischargeable debt rules for student loans because of the unintended consequence of students declaring bankrupt after getting through college.
What we know is that high debt loads for young adults is bad (because that can stick around and even grow over the course of a life time), yet US society has deliberately created such a situation in order to help young adults. That creates a lot of problems for the person trying to succeed.
This is typical of government policy in the US and elsewhere. It creates a public good because some people are having hard luck, which in turn creates various incentives to cheat or exploit the system for gain. Then several heavy-handed regulations are created to deal with the cheating/exploitation which in turn adapts to the changing regulatory environment, and so on. You end up with a complex public good or service that requires considerable work to access for the people the program is supposed to help, a number of authoritarian impositions on personal freedom and promiscuous data collection, and a complex ecosystem of cheaters and exploiters working the system (often allowed to continue unimpeded as long as they don't rock the boat).
So even if a genuine case of someone trying and always failing is found, doesn't mean that this someone or we are better off by attempting to do something about it.
To summarize my attitude about success and failure, sure not everyone starts at the same level, but there is still more than enough opportunity to try for even the poorest. And the economy itself has a variety of ways to equalize wealth after the fact. Just because you started life rich, doesn't mean you'll stay rich. I also don't buy that people repeatedly trying and failing is a big enough problem that we have to do anything about it. You can always find anecdotal stories in an imperfect world. Even if we do want to fix something about that situation, we need to keep in mind that our intervention can and often does make things worse rather than better.