Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

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.

If it's not publicly traded, it's super secure from any public accountability.

And while I'm increasingly hostile toward the shareholder model, we do get one transparency breadcrumb from this (gov managed) contrivance: The Earnings Call

Earnings Calls give us worthwhile amounts of internal information that we'd never get otherwise - info that often conflicts with public statements and reports to govs.

Like CapEx expenditures/forecast and the actual reasons that certain segments over/underperform. It's a solid way to catch corporations issuing bald-faced lies (for any press, public, gov that are paying attention).

    AT&T PR: Net Neutrality is tanking our infra investment
    ATT's EC: CapEx is high and that will continue

I won't be your counterparty on that bet, you've already won:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/09/15/trump-wants...

One of the reasons cited? All the work it takes. Which is just an insane response. If your business is so poorly run and organized that reconciling things each quarter represents a disproportionate amount of effort, something is very wrong. It means you definitely don't know what's going on, because by definition you can't know, not outside those 4 times a year. In which case there's a reasonable chance the requirement to do so is the only thing that's kept it from going off the rails.

These standards are different than IRS reporting.