Average distance to a supermarket in Amsterdam is 400 meter or 1300 feet

Post by midasuni » Fri, Dec 08, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #84

midasuni wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your rant is from a decade ago. Everything is delivered nowadays. Sure in the 70s the average housewife wouldn’t work and would walk to to the local shops during the week. Nowadays everyone works, so shops need to be open more hours. The restrictions on Sunday trading are the worst things - the one time I do actually go to a shop is when I’m doing something like DIY and find that I need something at 4pm on a Sunday a…

It's not a rant, but thanks for the sarcasm. It's an observation, given that I've lived through those decades. You would have loved the 70s. Nothing open on a Sunday, and shops closed half day on Wednesdays.

Post by sneed_chucker » Fri, Dec 08, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #68

DrBazza wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small. In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000…

Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say... The advantage of an independent butcher…

Post by deafpolygon » Fri, Dec 08, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #26

After spending a few weeks back in Europe (after 8 years in the US), it quickly came back to me how much easier it is to live a healthy daily pattern of life there than it is here. In particular: Shopping for food in the US is almost always a separate trip in a car or a bus or on foot. Whereas in Spain it's common to go meet friends, pick up some bread and veg from the store, meet more friends and pick up things from…

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Dec 08, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #87

mytailorisrich wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say... The advantage of an independent butcher…

Those big chains drain money from the local economy though. Small independent stores only send the cost of supplies/restocking out of the local economy. Chains mean there is continuously less money circulating in the town and requires people who import money from other local economies. Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.

Post by mytailorisrich » Fri, Dec 08, 2023, 3:00 PM UTC

sneed_chucker wrote: post #93

mytailorisrich wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say... The advantage of an independent butcher…

> Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country. They are precisely not…