I can't speak for New York. I've never been there. My experiences are that of portions of the Midwest in Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri. Larger places will have Walmarts and will have grocers and more industry.

What I see time and again our little towns that are too small to support even a Walmart or a grocery have one or two Dollar Generals. I'm not an economist and not sure what to make of that other than that a Dollar General seem to be pretty cheap to set up pretty cheap to stock and I guess and implicit acknowledgement that these markets are failures for anything other than dinky stores.

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Uh... What? Not true. Living in NYC for the past 4 years, before that I lived in rural Ohio and Texas. There are no dollar general or dollar tree stores here, just kinda expensive mishmash-of-crap stores, Duane Reades and Rite-Aids.

Hop on the 7 train. Goto jackson heights. Plenty of rink-dink dolla shops. Also check main street flushing.

There's Jack's 99 Cent store, which has at least two locations in midtown Manhattan. http://www.jacksnyc.com/

Yes. At the other end of Indiana there are small towns continuing to do well due to the RV industry (which only seems to grow). At least in the town I'm from the DG is always busy.

OTOH in Indianapolis we also have dollar stores but not everyone uses them.