Dollar General (DG) is officially getting sued by not only the U.S. Federal Trade Commission but 20 individual states as well.
The case stems from the four-year period between January 1, 2023, and March 31, 2026, when Dollar General logged over 29,000 customer complaints concerning not honoring its marked prices. These were compiled from all 48 U.S. states it operates in.
(For the record, Dollar General is the convenience chain with plenty of items that cost $5, $10, $20, or more.)
Filed just this past week, the lawsuit accuses the company of “engaging in long-running deceptive pricing practices by routinely charging customers more than the prices displayed on shelves, price tags, and advertisements, costing consumers millions of dollars.”
It added details to the allegation that the chain has:
… failed to correct the issue despite extensive corporate knowledge of the problem. The states joining the FTC lawsuit include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.
In response, Dollar General said the accusation that it’s “abandoned [its] mission and willfully disregarded the affordability needs of [its] customers” couldn’t “be further from the truth.” It also claims that it’s been absolutely compliant in handing over 200,000+ documents to the FTC in the run-up to the lawsuit.
So clearly, it’s going to fight the charges.
However, this is not the first time Dollar General has run afoul of government entities in recent memory. Dollar General has already been ordered to pay over $6 million in penalties by six state attorney generals over similar allegations between 2019 and 2026.
Microsoft cuts 27% of its workforce
We’ve been hearing the back-and-forth debate for months now – years even – about whether artificial intelligence (AI) will destroy jobs or not. And while there’s been so much evidence that employment won’t fall off a cliff anytime soon…
There are big-name or otherwise high-profile examples of humans losing out to technology.
Microsoft (MSFT), for instance, just sent out offers on Monday to tens of thousands of workers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and India across the company’s Xbox, Windows, Copilot, and finance divisions. The New York Post reported that the company is offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees as it seeks to “cut costs and revamp its staff for the AI era.”
Apparently, the offer is voluntary up ‘til December 31, with “acceptees” receiving eight weeks’ pay. But here’s the catch…
Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees last year. So there’s no guarantee what will happen to those employees who decline the offer.
Judging by its latest earnings report on Wednesday evening, these decisions are working well so far. First-quarter earnings per share (EPS) were $4.89 from revenue of $92.28 billion – which was quite the step up from analyst expectations of $4.73 and $90.63 billion, respectively.
They’re also significant gains over last year’s EPS of $4.13 and $77.6 billion in revenue.
Investors were naturally more than happy with those results. And they also celebrated how Microsoft’s capital expenditures came in at $39.37 billion instead of the $45.93 billion expected.
In short, like it or not, this Big Tech company isn’t incentivized at all to change its current AI game plan.
An inflation story: Trump vs. Biden
Believe it or not, “prices in the U.S. have risen only about half as quickly” so far during President Trump’s second term “as during his predecessor’s four years in office.
That what Yahoo Finance wrote earlier this week – a surprising source considering its usual unabashed dislike of the current administration. Yet it was equally direct in acknowledging that:
During the last election cycle, prices of all items rose more than 20% in Biden’s term, sparking widespread voter angst. This time around, price growth is notably slower, rising 5.4% in a little less than the two years since Inauguration Day.
On the one hand, that’s an impressive achievement for a president engaged in a major Middle Eastern conflict. It’s also important to note that when Biden took office, the national average was $2.39 per gallon. Yet it had spiked to $5.01 by June 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The problem is that this round of inflation is on top of the last round (or rounds) of inflation. Consumers were already stressed out over risen and rising prices, taking on massive amounts of more debt to survive.
So adding pain on top of that pain is difficult, to say the least.
It appears that the first Russian diesel shipment from the Trump-Putin deal made earlier this month is now on its way to the U.S. It’s a medium-sized tanker carrying 40,000 metric tons of ultra-low sulphur supply, and it’s supposed to be followed by plenty more.
If that’s true, inflation should decrease soon enough as transportation costs start to fall. But that will be far too late to sway election results on Tuesday.
What will happen will happen either because of or regardless of current costs.
Happy SWAN investing,
Brad Thomas
Editor, The Wide Moat Daily
