The mayor’s office says it would be the first major U.S. city to enact such a plan.

    • Zaktor
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      1 year ago

      Because Stores say shoplifting is a national crisis. The numbers don’t back it up. The surge in theft is mostly just made up, and what isn’t made up is kind of an irrelevantly small number.

      Stores expanded too much and then got hit by the pandemic, a tight labor market, and changes in buying patterns. Those sort of things have a lot larger impact on their profitability than whether shrink was 1.6% or 1.4%.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s capitalism…

        If they admit they overreached, it will hurt stock prices and their bonuses.

        So they blame crime, knowing a significant amount of the population will go along with it because it’s victim blaming and psychologically that makes people think it can’t ever effect themselves.

        I dont know why else people would take Walmart PR as gospel

        • Zaktor
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          1 year ago

          Some stores are higher than 1.4%, but it’s still in the low end of single digits, not like 15%. Raising prices a couple percent to compensate wouldn’t even be noticed.

          • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Does shrink include the cost of security, security measures, vandalism or injured employees? You have this one thing you think describes the whole thing and the reality is you’ve chosen your bad guy and you’re going to confirmation bias yourself there.

    • Uncle_Iroh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because wehh corporations wehh mom and pop shop (which they don’t go to because it’s inconvient) bla bla poor people. People like thinking they have a deeper understanding of something even if it’s objectively not true because it makes them feel intelligent, no matter how stupid it makes then look. The reason these stores closed is really simple, crime in low income areas caused these stores to not be profitable or simply not worth the endless hassle. I don’t even get why they’re mad though, they cry about mom and pop shops and when the large corporations leave and there is all the space for them they get mad the large corporations left. Idiotic.

      • Enigma@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        So I’d like to chime in here as someone who lives in a low income food desert. The food desert isn’t because of theft. In fact, many chains have tried to open up here over the decades. The city government is so hostile towards them though, that these stores don’t even get to the opening stages. The city wants to charge these stores exorbitant fees for no reason. Charge 10x as much for electricity than the town with a smaller population 15minutes away. Is this everywhere, no, but it is in more places than you’d think.

        Let me guess, your response to that would be “Well just vote those people out! It’s your fault for keeping them in there!” And my response to that is, vote them out and replace them with who? No one has run against these people since they were first elected into office in the 1960’s. Oh sure we’ve tried to get people to turn against them, but they’ve stacked the system so it’s damn near impossible. The only thing we can do is wait until they die, which doesn’t seem to be any time soon.

        You remind me of this guy I’ve debated with who had this outlandish claim that “If CEO’s are paid less, then they’d work less.” But there’s no actual proof to that, and trust me, he looked. He then went on to say he’d rather be paid in company stock than cash. Like he’d legit forego minimum wage to be paid in 100% stock.

        So I’m going to say the same thing to you that I’ve said to him. You’ve been all up and down this thread blaming theft as the reason why food deserts are a thing, can you provide nonbiased studies proving that?