56
‘Unprecedented’ theft contributed to $112 billion in retail losses last year
(www.seattletimes.com)
Cool. Let's see the wage theft stat now.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
56 points (73.7% liked)
News
22956 readers
2461 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The EPI estimated about $50 billion per year in wage theft back in 2014 which would equate to about $65 billion today. It could also have changed a bit since then.
https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-50-billion/
The EPI is fairly leftist economically so make a mental note of that when reading it.
Let's run those numbers again but pretend wages have kept up with inflation. Bet it's higher.
Summary: There is a normal percentage of theft compared to previous years, but because of inflation the estimated dollar amounts are “unprecedented.” Please don’t ask about the unprecedented profits.
Clickbait headline articles need to be shocking sounding. Bonus points if they push the narrative that companies are good and us horrible peasant thieves stealing from them are bad.
It’s worth noting that when retail sales go up, as they did in 2022, shrink also tends to rise. The average shrink rate in the 2022 fiscal year was 1.6%, up from 1.4% the year before. The latest figure is in line with shrink rates from 2019 and 2020.
In 2017 shrinkage accounted for $42 Billion, or 1.85%.. First off, that shows how crazy inflation is - $42 Billion was 1.85% then and $113 Billion is 1.6% now.
The other thing is that in 2017, wage theft accounted for $50 Billion in losses from workers. I would like to see how 2022’s wage theft numbers stack up against the shrinkage numbers.
wages don't keep pace with inflation, so the difference won't be as dramatic.
Just a correction: wage theft accounted for up to $50 billion in 2014 according to the EPI, not 2017. That would be roughly $65 billion today. Like you, I would also like to see more recent numbers.
Idk where or how yr getting 65B
For simplicity; 40B in 2014 is 120B today. That's x3. That would out wage theft at 150B.
Which is far more believable. These mfers are in court in a dozen states over child labor violations, I don't think they suddenly found a conscious
Inflation has not been 200% over the past 9 years.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50&year1=201401&year2=202308
$50 billion in 2014 equates to roughly $65 billion today.
I haven't shoplifted since I was a teenager.
But seeing the price of some of my groceries jump 30-80% compared to pre-Covid makes it fucking tempting.
All I'm saying is that if I'm doing self-checkout, and something I'm buying is missing its code, it's probably going to be the cheapest thing I can get to go through.
Bruh, how many bananas do you eat?
4,011
It has the feel of "we are the ones being shoplifted.."
I’ll bet these companies throw everything under the sun into the theft bucket. That includes internal mishandling of inventory. They then exaggerate the costs for insurance claims. 
Maybe they can all go to an instacart model or something like Amazons auto checkout model. Or just have actual cashiers. Maybe everything is in vending machines. Idk, but the current experience in retail mostly is horrible and I want to avoid it if at all possible.
Or just have actual cashiers.
oh well. fuck the corpos
Fake news lol
But even if true... Nobody cares about corps losing some profits.
get some cashiers!
Apples and oranges. If you are a cashier and theft occurs you aren't paid enough to risk anything, including your life, to stop theft. Companies can hire more asset protection people.
In Canada off-duty cops do that job AND get those hours added onto their retirement fund ... that we taxpayers pay for.
#ACAB
What? I like using self-checkout.
3 and 4 in this article with sources. https://dealaid.org/data/self-checkout/
aka skip scanning
Sorry, I'm not reading any of that.
Would you like to use your words and tell me what you want to say?
He was giving you sources so you could understand his viewpoint and see if it holds merit outside of anecdotal experience.
Do you think the way you responded fosters good faith conversation?
Absolutely. Shoving a wall of text in someone's face that you didn't type and saying "read this" is not worth my time.
If you want effort, put forth effort. I can also link to a plethora of stuff and say "read this," but I won't because it's a waste of time and you can find any information you want on the internet.
Sorry this needs to be spelled out for you. You'll understand it as you get older.
Damn dude, do you gotta be a cunt on the internet for no reason or is it fun? They've been saying that same "you'll get it when you're older" since I was in school and that's been a minute. Normally it came from some small minded blowhards, but I'll give you benefit of the doubt.
Their effort was to find the sources for you that purport their claim. It's not a big nuanced argument, they presented what they thought, you asked a question about what they meant, they linked you supporting information so you could be aware.
It's not their job to dissect the sources for you, it's their job to present their argument and if you didn't get it then they link you the bits they used. If you still don't get it, stop engaging with the person who linked sources.
When you were in school, did they teach you how to evaluate sources from multiple forms of media? Because the internet wasn't as massive as it is today when I was taking those classes, but they still taught how to go through a magazine, website, book, and video sources to identify the bias and reliability of the source.
If the only conversations you're having a full text and no one is linking to a source when they're making a claim, you're having a conversation, not a discussion or debate. It's why people cite their sources for published pieces, gotta check for plagiarism and you have to identify where you got information you claim is factual, it's just part of having those kinds of communications.
Look dude, I get it. You seem upset because I don't see the value in being linked a wall of text on the internet. It's because I've been there, many times, and it overwhelmingly is not worth taking seriously.
Like I said, you'll understand this when you have more experience. I'm tired of repeating myself, and taking your insults.
I'm gonna block you now. Goodbye.
This should be in upliftingnews.
Stealing from corporations is always reclamation.
Every profit they make is them getting extra for doing nothing extra.
Fuck them.
Also, all of these companies have theft insurance.
More than I would expect.