The Dollar General NOligarchy Profile
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Dollar General’s NOligarchy Score sits at 32.64 out of 100, reflecting data gathered from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period).
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
58.2
Wealth Extraction
11.3
Playing by the Rules
12.8
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 58.17/100. This reflects a steady federal lobbying operation concentrated on food and agriculture policy, carried out by a team that includes former government insiders, alongside zero Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 11.22/100. This reflects billions channeled into stock buybacks against a vast gap between executive and worker compensation.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 12.69/100. This reflects a repeated pattern of workplace safety penalties and consumer protection fines across 17 separate cases.
Dollar General ranks 17 out of 21 among companies sharing its federal industry classification — Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers — trailing the sector average score of 54.0 by more than 21 points. The company sits near the bottom of its sector on public accountability. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: Billions to Shareholders, Millions in Safety Fines
Dollar General pulled in $42.7 billion in annual revenue — and out of that, it chose to spend $2.75 billion buying back its own stock while paying $14.6 million in penalties for workplace safety, consumer protection, and discrimination violations over the two-year period. That buyback spending alone was more than 187 times larger than everything the company paid in regulatory fines combined. The company also collected $6.3 million in public subsidies during roughly the same stretch it was racking up eight-figure safety fines. The math is stark: money that could have funded raises for nearly 186,000 workers instead went toward pushing up the per-share price for investors who already hold the stock.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
Dollar General spent $412,500 on federal lobbying across the two-year period, with spending climbing from $105,000 in 2024 to $207,500 in 2025, then holding at $100,000 across the first two quarters of 2026. That is a modest sum for a company this size, but it was deployed consistently — filings show activity in every quarter tracked.
The company’s lobbyists focused entirely on two connected issue areas: Agriculture (8 filing mentions) and Food Industry safety and labeling (8 mentions), with descriptions citing “Farm Bill, nutrition, and WIC” issues repeatedly across 2025 and 2026. That focus maps directly onto Dollar General’s business model — the company operates as a major food retailer in low-income and rural communities where Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) purchases make up a meaningful share of sales, so changes to the Farm Bill or nutrition-assistance rules touch earnings directly. Lobbyists reported contact with the House of Representatives and Senate 16 times each, plus two contacts each with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) — the two federal agencies with the most direct authority over nutrition program funding.
No PAC contributions were reported over the period. Individual executive donations totaled just $1,566, a negligible sum.
Three of Dollar General’s six registered lobbyists previously held government positions before joining the company’s influence operation — including Callie Eideberg, who served as Senior Professional Staff on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Alexander Vogel, who served as Former Chief Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. These are not just policy experts; they are people who once sat on the other side of the table and know exactly which doors to knock on.
THE PUBLIC DOOR
Public comment form
90-day docket
maybe a form reply
WAIT: MONTHS
THE REVOLVING DOOR
3 lobbyists on the roster once held covered government positions.
One was Senior Professional Staff, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
WAIT: NONE
3 of the lobbyists on Dollar General's filings previously held covered government positions — the same door, entered from both sides.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
Dollar General’s CEO pay ratio is 662:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, according to the company’s SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s three-year average package was about $12.5 million — set against a median worker’s annual earnings of $18,876. That is not a gap; it is a chasm.
The company spent $2,748,014,000 buying back its own stock in fiscal 2024 — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses, and that primarily benefits the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of the stock market.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 186,064 workers a $14,769.19 raise, spread across the last fiscal year.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 186K employees
Spent on buybacks
$2.7B
directed to shareholders
÷ 186K
workers
Per-worker raise
$14,769
per employee, 1-year total
Spread over that year, that's a 78% annual raise on the median worker's $18,876 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
Dollar General also paid out $519,510,000 in dividends in fiscal 2025 and $518,983,000 in fiscal 2024. The data shows they didn’t have to choose between their investors and their workforce; they could have paid out those dividends in full and still funded that worker raise through the far larger buyback pool alone. They simply chose not to.
Buybacks also shrink the pool of shares outstanding, which mechanically boosts Earnings Per Share — a metric tied directly to executive bonus targets. The same leadership that signed off on a $2.75 billion buyback benefits personally when that spending pumps up the per-share numbers used to calculate its own bonuses.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense
Over the two-year tracking period, Dollar General accumulated $14,618,636 in penalties across 17 separate cases. The largest category by far was workplace safety, with 13 separate violations totaling $12,365,353 — a pattern that points to routine, recurring conditions rather than isolated incidents. This two-year window is only a fraction of the company’s full docket on the source site, which covers a longer history than the period examined here.
WORKPLACE SAFETY OR HEALTH VIOLATION
13 SEPARATE CASES
2024–2026 · $12.4 million in penalties
13 separate workplace safety or health violation penalties in 2024–2026 — Dollar General paid $12.4 million for the same category of offense, case after case.
The single largest case was a $12,000,000 penalty from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2024 for workplace safety violations. Consumer protection cases added another $1,950,000, split between a $1,550,000 penalty from the Pennsylvania Attorney General and a $400,000 penalty from the Colorado Attorney General in 2025. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) also fined the company $295,000 in 2024 for employment discrimination.
While regulators were fining Dollar General for these violations, governments were simultaneously handing the company public money. Between 2024 and 2025, Dollar General collected $6,304,148 in public subsidies across 12 separate grants, the largest a $4,000,000 award in 2024.