U.S. retailers admit they lied about shoplifting, retail crime again

You mean that Target wasn't closing stores because of theft after all?! I'm shocked.
- That was just the coverup so they didn’t get backlash from laying everyone off after another round of C-Suite bonuses.
  
  They probably closed the stores trying to unionize.
  
  You don’t understand what it’s like for them. They don’t like sacking people for bonuses but they just can’t come up with any other ways to increase profit. What are they supposed to do? Get creative? Build a strong respectful work culture? Not take a bonus? You see. It’s not as easy as you think. Timmy can miss out on his toy train this Christmas. Besides, it’s just business
- I’ll give Target a bit of lee at here because they were only there first to admit they were wrong, they also shared a bunch of data about how their shrink calculation methodology, which much of the retail sector shares, is flawed.
  I have worked for target. Their logistics methodology is incredibly on point. They are highly invested in getting things right, if no other reason, for the sake of their own profitability.So as there are being open, they have some credibility here, I would say, especially given that others here are so closed. This interest certainly serves their profit motive as much as it services our our motive. There is, at least, for now, no reason to distress them.
  
  Let's practice this together, folks. "Corporations never put their employees or customers ahead of profits."
  If you believed them at their word, you'd be wrong.
  
  Target: logistics methodology....
  laughs in Canadian
  No they don't.
- Probably doesn't help though
  
  Theft clearly doesn't affect their overall profits considering how many chains have had record profits.
  Looking at you Walmart

Let me guess. The stores they closed tried to unionize, so they made up some shit about shoplifting.
- This, with a generous side of pushing right wing narratives about urban crime panic because they think it will help Republicans win.
- And yet this was all done by the "national Retain Federation".
  Literally complain, yell, cry, and fire people because of unions and yet they are in a corporate Union themselves.
  Unions work.
- I thought it was just because real estate is expensive af now
- I'm not going to trust "boingboing.net", but that's just me
  
  Boing boing .net has been a reputable site for years. I think it started as a blog for author and journalist Cory Doctorow, but has become a news site of its own. The recent term enshittification was coined by Doctorow.
  
  Holy shit, boingboing.net?
  That's a site I haven't heard of in a long time.
  It was one of the first websites I remember regularly visiting in the 90s, and looks like they haven't changed much since.
  That's cool.
  
  I don't know why they post the boingboing piece when it links to a much better Reuter's article.

The only meaningful theft, by the numbers, is wage theft.

ITT: People who haven't been on the internet long enough to know what BoingBoing is.
I'm old.
- If you know what BoingBoing is, your knees probably crackle when you squat and stand.
  
  Yup. I also groan when I sit down. You just had to call me out, didn't you?
  
  At least a decade old and still has a better reading experience than that "paid" news sites.
  
  Damn you had to come for me like that
  
  I feel seen
- I wonder how Slashdot is doing...
  Looks like it's still going strong, but each article has like 15 comments. And the poll has a CowboyNeal option...
  
  Oh wow, forgot about Slashdot...
  Fark, Slashdot, and BoingBoing were pretty much my daily go-to in the pre-Digg/reddit internet
  
  3 digit UID here, I still visit daily but rarely comment
- I’m tired, boss.
- It's one of those new upstart weblogs right
- I remember getting something I did linked to on BoingBoing back in the day and I felt like I was famous for a little while.
- Yeah I think i was visiting Boing Boing on the regular a couple decades ago or nearly so.
  
  I was just thinking about 1up the other day

This turning out to be true is unsurprising, but if it were, follow it to its logical conclusion and you would see large retailers lobbying the government to increase wages. Like, we live in a fucking police state, the problem is not that we're suddenly an outlaw country, the problem is that people don't make enough money or have enough safety nets to live. It's the same with all of the "Americans feel bad about the economy even though the dow is up, why?" Well, because we can't afford housing and groceries. Simple fucking problem.
- I was looking at Bidens approval rating compared to other presidents on 538 and it's crazy seeing the last time this really was so bad, aside from Trump, was the Great Depression...which says alot about the disconnect today spouting Dow successes but normal people struggling to stay afloat.
- Those stock indexes only show how the top corporations are doing. A company gets removed from the index if it performs poorly and is replaced by another company that has increasing stock price. The markets as it is displayed in media only show how corporations are doing. So basically the ruling class is selling economic performance to everyone else to keep people in line and their heads securely on their bodies.
- No one is going to do that, because if the peasants have more then the nobility can't mock them for being lesser.

They’re all insured for these kinds of losses anyway (I used to work in big box retail operations).
- And that’s a totally simplistic view of what I said. Overall, big box does well to keep theft down as to avoid paying. It’s all a big game.
- Insurance isn't going to cost less than what they're losing. It just smooths out the losses and avoids any surprises.
  
  They’re self insured for this… and it’s priced into the products they sell.

Don't worry, people will completely ignore the retraction and continue to blame their fellow poor people (just not themselves) for the outrageous behavior of our corporations.

Kind of like how any game developer who says that piracy is the reason that they failed financially, even though some of the greatest games of all time are the ones that get pirated the most.

Does this qualify as a news article?
- ~~It's a parody website, I'm a bit surprised it isn't marked as such as people seem to think otherwise~~
  Going to leave my comment but I am thoroughly impressed that this is not a parody.
  
  No it isn't.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing
  Cory Doctorow even used to be an editor.

They are talking about organized retail theft. Individuals stealing still could make up a large amount of loss. Article doesn't seem clear to me on that point.
- Stores have insurance to protect them against theft.
  
  Having insurance isn't a free money glitch. Insurance companies wouldn't be able to operate if the insurance didn't cost more than the claim payouts.
  
  And the more they use the coverage, the more it costs.
  Have you ever filed claims against your home or auto insurance? Even when it was fully in policy and not your fault, your rates likely spiked.
- That type of knee jerk conjecture is really weak. The data collected on shrinkage, as noted in the linked Reuter's article, is noisy. You can't differentiate lose due to theft or shipping mistakes or cliericsl error.
  More importantly, and not mentioned directly in the boingboing article, was the cited number of rising organized theft was based upon an analyst from a security firm. The report was created in partnership with that firm. With the recent redaction, there is no mention of that firm.