by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:
We are right in the middle of a tsunami of shoplifting that never seems to end, and as a result major retailers are closing down locations in major cities all over the country. A few years ago, videos of brazen shoplifters ruthlessly looting retail stores were shocking everyone, but now this sort of thing is so common that very few of us are shocked anymore. We have come to expect that our retail stores will be regularly looted because this is who we have become as a nation. Sadly, even many of our politicians aren’t too concerned that the impoverished masses are stealing billions of dollars worth of merchandise from our major retailers. Like so many others, maybe they figure that those retailers won’t even miss what is being taken. But the truth is that they do miss what is being taken, and CEOs have been complaining very loudly about it…
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For much of the past year or so, executives at big retailers did something unusual: They talked about theft in their stores. A lot.
Walmart’s CEO warned it could lead to store closures and higher prices. Target’s CEO said it was costing the chain upward of a billion dollars. Home Depot’s finance chief called it a “consistent pressure” that the chain is “tackling every day.”
With a backdrop of viral videos showing brazen and violent thieves, crime became a common theme on retailers’ typically dry quarterly earnings calls. Executives often mentioned “shrink” — inventory missing for one reason or another — as a factor behind declining profits. The list grew long: Macy’s, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, T.J.Maxx, Dollar General.
Year after year, things get even worse.
It is being reported that “revenue loss to theft has been steadily rising since 2016”, and “shrink” is now costing our retailers more than 100 billion dollars a year.
That is about the size of Russia’s entire military budget for 2024.
Just think about that for a few moments.
We have never seen anything like this before.
So far this year, retailers in New York City have filed more than 21,000 shoplifting complaints…
Don’t believe pro-crime progressives when they lie about public safety here in NYC: This year so far has seen 21,578 shoplifting complaints from Gotham’s retailers.
That’s a 5% increase over last year’s obscene 20,552; more than 41% of the 2024 crimes are concentrated in Manhattan.
And that’s part of an ugly, persistent trend.
Full-year numbers since 2021 have jumped from 43,892 to 59,137, an increase of almost 35% — and the real problem is surely far higher, as exhausted merchants don’t bother to report many incidents.
Even in the very best areas of the Big Apple, major retailers are being routinely ransacked, and authorities seem completely powerless to stop the endless crime wave…
Many would argue that conditions are even worse on the west coast.
One store manager in California that recently had a “meltdown reaction” when a young woman was stealing from her store says that businesses “are closing left and right because of all this looting going on”…
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