About minimum wage

[abaris]

Your story, though, is familiar to many americans.  Economies of scale, the power of a bulk purchaser (or producer) to dominate the market and drive out competition.  At some point, all other things being equal (I know, hardly ever are)..we just have to accept that the other model was better than ours, strictly comparing business to business.

Not so much the model as the financial power. If you are able to open up a chain of -say - 30 stores at once and to undercut prices of local retailers, you're bound to have one over them. And that was the case. The ones opening the discounter already had the financial means from other non related business exploits. They originally ran a chain of DIY stores in the third generation. Last year they also went bankrupt because - same old song - getting too greedy and expanding too fast without observing demand.