Posted on 11/18/2022 6:37:09 PM PST by DoodleBob
...but lately the amount of seemingly ordinary items—soap, ice cream, detergent—locked up in stores—CVS, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc—is increasing. If you don't see this where you live yet, you might soon. Or you might visit parts of America where it has become commonplace.
...
Who’s doing the stealing? “Three categories,” says Lisa LeBruno, senior executive vice president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “There’s the opportunistic shoplifter, the persistent habitual offender and then organized retail crime gangs or ORC,” she says. ...“Organized retail crime has definitely been ticking up over the last few years,” says Mike Combs, director of asset protection, organized retail crime and central Investigations team at The Home Depot. “During the pandemic, many would have thought it may have gotten better, but it actually got worse. It certainly affects the bottom line.”
Why are people stealing these days? That’s a tough one. To some degree it’s a reflection of our times. Simply put, America’s social contract is straining. Until recently we’ve been able to lay out goods—often in mammoth, big box stores with only a handful of employees. When our social contract is strong—i.e people are getting a fair shake—it’s a model that works. Now it seems more people are stealing instead. (BTW, our stressed social contract may be capping how far we can push this people-light, technology-heavy model. Last month Wegman’s ended its scan-and-go shopping app. Why? Shrinkage of course.)
I think wealth inequality has everything to do with all this. Think back to the so-called Public Enemies era in the 1930s, when bank robbers ran rampant across the land. That also coincided with the Great Depression. Less money in the hands of poor people and more stealing. Seems like cause and effect to me.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
The unintended consequences of other government policies have also contributed to the problem, retailers say. Changes to bail laws mean that increasingly, those who engage in misdemeanor property crime — considered a nonviolent offense — are quickly back on the streets, where some go right back to stealing. Mask mandates allow criminals to cover up their faces in stores without attracting attention. Bans on single-use plastic bags have made it acceptable for consumers to walk around stores with their own non-transparent reusable bags, enabling thieves to load up in the aisles and head for the exits.
I won’t be surprised if I start seeing things locked up at my local Walmart, target or Safeway.
I have an idea!
Let’s turn the ENTIRE WORLD into a FOOD DESERT!!!!
Coming soon to grocery shelves everywhere!
“It certainly affects the bottom line.”
Neh... I don’t think it does so much. I’m pretty sure the bottom line stays the same, and the prices we all have to pay increase.
Clearly, what is needed is more Communist redistribution of income, comrades.
Remember the scene in Dr Zhivago when he comes home from the war to find the Communists have turned his family home into a slum dwelling for dozens of people, complete with their own political officer? Coming soon to a country near you.
There’s another factor at work, IMO, and that is that people constantly hear of government officials enriching themselves handsomely at the public trough, and very, very few of them ever face any consequences. And these are people who are paid into, sometimes well into six figures, with pensions and perks and per diem expense accounts normal people never get.
He now lives in a multi million dollar home while I live in a nice,comfortable...but far from luxurious...home.
Thankfully, I can now demand equality!!!
Turn the stores into vending machines.
Pay, then open the temporarly unlocked, small, armored door to retrieve.
Wealth inequality has NOTHING to do with it.
A breakdown of morals due to abandoning faith in God has everything to do with it.
Mississippi changed their felony law from $500.00 to $1,000 several years ago.
Ancient civilizations quelled pirating in defense of private property.
Thousands of years ago.
Not all cultures bought into the theory. The “sea peoples” devastated the Bronze Age.
My brother worked in a county prison for about 10 years. He said about half the people in the prison were arrested for shop lifting at Walmart.
I’m walking out of Walmart tonight, and the cop stops a woman from leaving. Pretty sure it was a shop lifter. About 30 years old, a little wild looking.
I would say 50% of the inflation at the grocery stores is to cover profit loss do to shoplifting.
It's that, and also the years of class warfare and race hatred pushed by the left. There are now many people who feel justified in stealing, cheating (including vote fraud) etc., because THEY believe they have been 'put upon'. Whatever they can get away with is justified to them. When you believe that you are entitled to 'pay back' you are not bound by most societal rules and laws.
Then get jumped by 6 blacks.
So...when do we start doing our 'fair-share' of the shoplifting just to even things out?
Years ago my brother worked at Home Depot...he was the manager of the tool department. He was called into a meeting where he was told that he was catching to many shop-lifters. He was told that the company already knew how much was going to be shop-lifted in each of their stores and that the prices listed on the products on the shelves already covered those losses.
They were fearful that something violent would happen.
That’s for them.
I no longer have to go to Big Box Stores, in general.
Plus we are an open carry State with a low population density.
I’m getting prepped for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Most of it has to do with an educational/cultural establishment that pounds away at
1) society being blatantly racist and unfair, and
2) money/flash/materialism being everything over any kind of personal character or accountability.
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