Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

Dollar stores have on average a 2% profit margin, just like grocery stores. They are not the villains here.

This is like cheating in a golf match against a professional and then saying "I got the same score as my opponent, I am not the villain here".

I don't think it is, so maybe you can help me draw the parallels.

Do you think large dollar stores are faking or cheating their profit margin numbers?

Not charging the best-advertised price is dishonest. It might also be in customers' best interest if the cost of keeping consistent price data on low-margin items costs more than whatever the inconsistency is. Or the answer might be that dollar stores sell too wide of a variety too cheaply on too low-margin product to play supermarket-style pricing games effectively.

Especially since it’s advantageous to adjust suppliers that you own to maintain tiny margins (who owns the land they rent, for example)

Their returns (margins are irrelevant) are usually lower than grocery stores. Large retailers will turn over their inventory tens of times a year, dollar stores won't so the returns are typically lower.

For some reason, left-wing journalists turn into law of one price zealots when confronted with this issue. The reality is that these locations have low-volume and stores everywhere are relatively expensive to run now. For some reason, journalists get angry at the company rather than people who control how much it costs stores to operate. I mean local governments in the US had no problem accepting Dollar General's sales tax from their poor constituents shrug probably more than the corporation is making from the store.

I live in the UK and there is a store like this, Co-Op. The Guardian finds it easier to blame evil foreign corporations because the Co-Op has much higher prices but is a non-profit so the narrative of the evil corporation crumbles.

You can find a poor me for almost any corporation to excuse their ripping people off.

I mean, they are cheating customers on the item price, so it goes to show they'll do illegal stuff without care, so yea, why not.

Subsidiary income would be included in a financial statement.

What does their margin have to do with anything? Or, what things do you think they should and shouldn’t be able to do given their low margins?

Not if the landlord is a side entity and not a subsidiary.

how happy do you think the shareholders would be about that?

You were talking about subsidiaries, though.

The company owning both Dollar General and the sister real estate would report consolidated income.

If you're saying there's a secret arm's length relationship between a dollar store chain and a real estate holding, structured just to trick the public into thinking low cost retail is low margin, I'm afraid that is not true.

"We get more money and they keep coming back?, carry on"

Both groups have the same profit margin (golf score). One group is achieving it by deceive customers (cheating at golf) while the other is achieving it without doing that (being good at golf).

This is like me showing you my scorecard after cheating at golf, and saying "do you think the scorecard is fake?".

Real profit margin. Achieved through deceit. This is vilainy.