Terms like “food deserts” have been cooked up by Them to explain things that really need no explanation. Companies like Walmart and Kroger exist to make a profit by selling merchandise and groceries for more than they paid for them. Other than the cost of the merchandise/food itself, there are all sorts of expenses that bite into profitability.
For example, if a box of Captain Crunch costs Publix $2.00 and they sell it for $4.00, you would think that would mean a profit of $2.00. Not so. Publix also needs to build and maintain a physical store full of shelves, one of those shelves holding Captain Crunch. That store requires an enormous amount of electricity to keep the lights and registers on, not to mention all of those freezers and coolers running. The store also needs a certain number of surly retail employees to stock the shelves, operate the registers and avoid making eye contact with customers. Back at Publix headquarters in Lakeland, Florida there are offices full of support people, from buyers to fat angry women in HR.
In a single box of Captain Crunch, those costs are very small as it is spread out over the whole facing of Captain Crunch as well as Cheerios and Rice Chex and all of the other groceries and merchandise in a store, and most of the non-food merchandise in stores that sell groceries are huge profit drivers with very large margins. The kitchen gadgets you see hanging on strips in the grocery aisle probably are marked up 100% or more.
That is how retail works and I am sure you all know this. But what happens when you pay $2.00 for an item in your store but you don’t end up selling it at all because someone steals it? You not only lose any profit and you lose the cost of the item but it also impacts the fixed costs that are now spread out over fewer boxes of Captain Crunch. In the retail business this is called “shrink” and it mostly comes from theft, both shoplifters and employee theft. If someone drops a jar of pickles and it breaks, an employee is supposed to mark that item as damaged and unsaleable so it is accounted for but when something is stolen it isn’t accounted for until you do your inventory.
You might be shocked to learn that retail theft is a major problem in America and it is getting worse, especially in places where our benevolent overlords have decided to stop arresting people for shoplifting. We have all seen the videos of rampaging hordes of youths and scholars stealing anything not nailed down, even stealing stuff like cosmetics and laundry detergent. Another stunning revelation is that this semi-organized retail looting tends to be concentrated in lower income urban areas that are mostly populated by blacks, although blacks have started to travel to locations where the entire store isn’t under lock-and-key to steal, like criminal mastermind Ta’Kiya Young who was stealing booze while pregnant before ramming a cop and getting shot.
That is not to suggest White people don’t shoplift, of course they do. My best friend as a young teen used to steal sunglasses all the time even though he was from a very wealthy family. The organized theft we have been seeing become endemic since the martyring of Saint George Floyd? Video evidence would indicate that it is overwhelmingly committed by blacks.
When a retailer is losing thousands of dollars in merchandise at a time, they are left with few options. Some stores have gone to the extreme of locking up all of their merchandise and requiring customers to get an employee to open the cases (although I saw some industrious scholars the other day robbing a place with one scholar using a small torch to force open the cases while an accomplice emptied them out). Other stores have increased their security although that brings a different set of problems and dangers. There are plenty of videos of Walmart greeters being assaulted when they tried to interfere with shoplifters and then this just happened in Philadelphia…
Two security guards at Macy’s in Center City were stabbed, one fatally, inside the iconic department store Monday morning, police said.
Shortly before 11 a.m., a 30-year-old man — identified by law enforcement sources as Tyrone Tunnell — attempted to steal some hats from the store at 13th and Market Streets. When security guards confronted Tunnell and retrieved the stolen items, he initially left without incident, said Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford.
But about 10 minutes later, Tunnell returned, then approached one of the guards and started stabbing him, Stanford said. When a second security guard attempted to intervene, Stanford said, Tunnell slashed and stabbed that guard as well. One of the men, a 30-year-old who had been stabbed in the neck, died from his injuries at Jefferson Hospital a short time later, Stanford said. The second guard, a 23-year-old who was stabbed in the face and forearm, was in stable condition.
https://archive.ph/hKL5n
Trying to steal hats? Then he was stopped and security let him go but he couldn’t just walk away, instead Tyrone came back and stabbed two security officers, killing one. No impulse control, uncontrolled violent rage at being interfered with while in the commission of a crime. That all sounds eerily familiar.
Just for the sake of being thorough I found a picture of Tyrone Tunnell….
Philadelphia is a craphole of a city, with a serious violent crime issue and retail theft booming. From the Inquirer article:
But the store, located on a stretch of East Market Street that often sees higher rates of homelessness and foot traffic, has recently faced what Stanford said was some of the highest rates of retail theft in the city. So far this year, he said, police have received 250 reports of retail theft at the location.
Retail theft has been a significant issue in Philadelphia and nationally.
Locally, reports of property crime have increased in recent years after dropping to historic lows before the pandemic. Philadelphia police are arresting only a fraction of the number of people accused of retail theft. So far this year, 409 people have been arrested for retail theft, compared to 1,724 people arrested in 2013, according to data from the District Attorney’s Office.
Of those whose cases were resolved this year, more than 60% have had their cases dismissed or withdrawn by prosecutors, data shows. About a third pleaded guilty to the crime, while 20 people entered diversion programs.
The District Attorney for Philadelphia is the notorious Larry Krasner, a Jewish attorney that spent most of his career defending criminals and criminal organizations like black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia. He was propelled into office by a $1.45 million donation from George Soros, one of many DAs across the country bought and paid for by Soros for the express purposes of not prosecuting crime. That is like hiring someone as a cab driver but then telling them not to pick up any passengers. No surprise, Tyrone Tunnel was “known to law enforcement” on more than one occasion.
She said that the man in custody “has a history of arrests and prosecutions throughout the region.” This indicates, she said, “that his interactions with the criminal legal system failed to produce a result that improved public safety.”
His interactions with the criminal legal system failed to produce a result that improved public safety? That is an awfully fancy way to say that giving him a slap on the wrist over and over didn’t discourage Tyrone from being a criminal. As is usually the case, Tyrone Tunnel is apparently a career criminal that kept committing minor crimes until he finally ended up killing someone. At some point the “justice” system should have recognized that he was a dirtbag and locked him up for good but of course that never happened, leaving him free to commit crimes and eventually killing someone.
Gee Wally, why aren’t there stores in cities where blacks rob them like locust stripping a wheat field? Clearly retailers should open stores in terrible neighborhoods and keep them open even when they are not profitable due to theft as a form of reparations or something.
That brings me to a couple of classy local ladies
Duo accused of stealing $7K of OTC allergy medicine
Two women already serving suspended sentences for stealing more than $4,500 worth of allergy medicine at area stores might be headed to prison after detectives found they may have stolen thousands of dollars more in makeup and beauty products – as well as more allergy medicine.
Allen County prosecutors formally charged 36-year-old Arlicia E. Knuckles and 32-year-old Ashley Janae Pernell each with a felony count of corrupt business influence Wednesday.
Knuckles and Pernell were both given 2-year suspended prison sentences on theft charges earlier this year stemming from 118 packages of Allegra valued at $4,541 that went missing from the Fort Wayne Costco this past summer.FWPD: Homeless trio’s meat stealing scheme comes to an end
Court records in that case show that Knuckles and Pernell went into the Costco, grabbed a cart, a cooler and boxes of a popular brand of chips.
They emptied the boxes of the bags of chips in one aisle and then loaded up the cooler and the now empty chip boxes with the packages of Allegra, Allen Superior Court documents said. After that, the duo went to the self-scanning checkout aisle of the store and paid for only the chips and the cooler and then walked out.
https://archive.ph/4xJRc
After being arrested for that brilliant scheme, the delightfully named Arlicia E. Knuckles and her accomplice decided to do it again at a different warehouse store.
While that case wound its way through the court system, Fort Wayne police investigators identified Knuckles and Pernell as two women caught on surveillance camera stealing $2,575 of over-the-counter allergy medicine at the Fort Wayne Sam’s Club, according to court documents.
The duo is also accused of stealing more than $2,500 worth of merchandise at the Ulta on East Coliseum Boulevard this past October, another $350- to $750- worth of merchandise at a local Walgreen’s and then another $600 worth of razors, bodywash and Rogaine from the Kroger on East State Boulevard in early November, court records said.
According to the story they took their stolen goods to a local home and from there the merchandise was apparently shipped somewhere else in boxes ‘addressed to “Chinese” names’. I assume they are paid pennies on the dollar and the merchandise ends up being sold in another state.
I am a frequent shopper at the Costco and Sam’s they were stealing from. Because of people like Ms. Knuckles, I get to pay higher prices to make up for the crap they steal but somehow I am the bad guy according to our overlords.
Retailers are in the business of making money so if they could make a decent profit by opening stores in “food deserts”, they certainly would. When you consider that poor families get a monthly allotment of food stamps and that in Indiana a single mom with four kids can get over a grand a month in SNAP benefits…
…it seems like poor neighborhoods should be a great place to sell groceries. They aren’t, not because Walmart is “racist” but because stores in poor neighborhoods get robbed blind. There is a reason the clerk at my local gas station isn’t behind bulletproof glass but inner city gas stations in Chicago and Philadelphia have armed guards.
Where “food deserts” exist, they exist for a reason and the reason is not “systemic racism” or “White supremacy” or any other nonsensical phrases designed to deflect blame. Food deserts only exist because the neighborhood customer base makes it impossible for retailers to make a profit.
Is it them Yogi??
Its always them BooBoo
Excellent column! Thanks for saying it so eloquently.