Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

Dollar stores are private equity with a checkout lane.

In 2025, Dollar Tree sold Family Dollar to a group of private-equity firms: Brigade Capital Management, Macellum Capital Management and Arkhouse Management Co.

https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d...

It’s a business model cosplaying as poverty relief while quietly siphoning money from the people least able to lose it. They already run on a thin-staff, high-volume model. That 23% increase is not a glitch. They know their customers can’t drive across town to complain. They know the regulators won’t scale fines to revenue.

Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?

Private equity are the crows of the economy. They pick off weak / dysfunctional businesses and open space for fresh competition (or for other markets to open up).

As far as I’ve seen that’s as far from the truth as it can be. They in fact consolidate terrible businesses, undercut the good ones and drive them out of the market until only they are left, after which point, they get even worse.