[acdha]

> Which means the most prices can be lowered is 2%.

For people who live near one of those stores and can afford to shop competitively. In many urban environments, the competition is smaller shops or places which know you aren’t going to spend an hour driving elsewhere.

I live in DC, and we have a Safeway near us which often charged 2-3 TIMES what Costco charged. Once a second market opened in our neighborhood, just like magic the prices at Safeway came down.

The corner market was basically never competitive on prices because it’s tiny and carries the small sized products which always work out to a higher cost.

[rsynnott]

> In many urban environments, the competition is smaller shops or places which know you aren’t going to spend an hour driving elsewhere.

I'm kind of curious what is different about the US environment that makes this the case. Most large European cities have supermarkets (national chains) all over the place. To the point that it gets a bit silly; I've got about five Tescos in easy walking distance, which have the same prices as other Tescos (one is a Tesco Metro, which is slightly more expensive).

[acdha]

In the U.S., the answer usually comes back to racism. In the post-WWII era, a lot of mostly-white people moved to the suburbs. This pulled a lot of tax base and business away and also lead to a lot of neighborhoods being partitioned by highways so the suburban office workers could commute faster. In some areas, that combined with politics problems lead to riots in the 60s which further damaged many neighborhoods. All of that lead businesses not to invest or to pull out of less profitable neighborhoods. People who could afford cars would accelerate the shift by driving to the higher-end markets, so this can produce a negative feedback loop over decades, especially when businesses aren’t jumping to put money into remodeling or upgrading those locations.

Every time I’ve been in Europe I keep asking why we can’t have those markets, too. Trying to minimize time spent out of our cars and avoid contact with our neighbors has had a really big price.