19 ms·

More Americans are shoplifting food

110 points by awnird 6y ago

Serious_Cheese 6y ago
>“People will say, ‘I was just hungry.’ And then what do you do?” People stealing food to survive while the super wealthy and rich becoming richer and richer[1]. What a great time to be alive. [1](https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/11/18/elon-musk-passes-mark-zuckerberg-to-become-the-worlds-fourth-richest-person/?sh=737e65404bec https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/11/18/elon...) EDIT: I don't particularly dislike Elon (the man has done alot of good), but he was the easiest example I could think of. Stock market is a better indicator of rich people's wealth.
- ku-man 6y ago
  Well, it's not like it was different at any point of history (unless you consider the most primitive civilizations.)
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
  Not that Elon Musk doesn't have plenty of flaws that people online will be happy to spill much ink about, but what does that have to do with widespread poverty on a national level? Does the US not have a government and state-level and federal-level representatives whose job it is to take care of their citizens and keep them out of starvation? Elon Musk and his pals seem like a convenient distraction from holding accountable people whose job it is to protect their constituents.
  - tempsy 6y ago
    Agree that blaming individuals makes no sense. It's the system that is pushing the poorest into more debt and insecurity while making the rich richer that is the problem. A lot of talk about building a healthy middle class but we've lost track of that goal decades ago.
    - staplers 6y ago
      Except those people heavily dictate how the system operates. "Systems" don't just operate without human input or decision-making.
  - owenmarshall 6y ago
    > Does the US not have a government and state-level and federal-level representatives whose job it is to take care of their citizens and keep them out of starvation? It’s patently obvious that no, the US does not.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Many of those wealthy individuals (or their companies, at least) have lobbied to ensure that we don't have a government which takes upon itself to keep citizens out of starvation. Not sure about Elon Musk specifically, but politicians don't just magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents.
    - et-al 6y ago
      To spell it out for those in the back: reducing tax rates reduces the government's ability to fund public projects. i.e. roads, schools, and safety nets like food banks. Also, the responsibility of feeding children has fallen upon schools in some areas. When SF closed schools in March 2020, one of the issues they had to address was "how do we feed the kids?" https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/sfusd-provide-free-meals-students-during-closure-schools https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/sfusd-provide-...
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Politicians magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents whenever they think they can get away with it, unless they're saints - and not many saints are politicians. The better question might be, why do they think they can get away with it? Why do they get away with it? (By the way, note that this is not just a problem with one party...)
      - brundolf 6y ago
        Whenever they can get away with it and it's in their best interest (thanks to lobbyists). If they don't get anything out of it, they may as well take the free goodwill from voters.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Yeah, maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect that there's always some lobbyists willing to make it worth any politician's time to do what's not in the voters' interest.
  - mempko 6y ago
    Because money is power and it's clear people like Musk have a bigger responsibility to push for an accountable government.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Are you sure? I like Elon Musk quite a bit, and even I don't think he should go around telling politicians what to do. That's not what we as a society have businesspeople for.
      - mempko 6y ago
        I agree with you. However, there is the world we want and the world we live in. Until we have an actual democracy (which likely won't have billionaires, look into what happens in popular movements in the past) then Musk has an outside responsibility to society because he has outsized power.
  - JoshTko 6y ago
    Agree it's unfair to single out Elon. But Elon has clearly been anti-union for a long while and has building factories in states with low union presence. He's undoubtedly contributing to income inequality via corporate policies. The cumulative pressure by major companies on congress is probably the single main reason why congress does not enact stronger protection. We got corporate tax cuts because of this over say better employment protection laws. Disclosure: am a Tesla stockholder.
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    No. We have representatives whose job it is to serve their campaign donors. Musk is a leech, but someone with that much money has political influence.
- angrais 6y ago
  Could be worse, e.g., any prior point in time on average ...
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  > Meanwhile, an estimated 54 million Americans will struggle with hunger this year, a 45 percent increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With food aid programs like SNAP and WIC being reduced, and other federal assistance on the brink of expiration, food banks and pantries are being inundated, reporting hours-long waits and lines that stretch into the thousands. And meanwhile, in the other America: > When Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump start building their new home on the 1.8-acre lot at 4 Indian Creek Island Road that they purchased for $30 million, they’ll have plenty of equally famous neighbors to get to know. > Indian Creek Island, sometimes called “Miami’s Billionaire Bunker,” is home to an eclectic group of some of the world’s wealthiest, from singers to hedge fund managers, inventors to developers — even the founder of a company dedicated to collecting blood donations. > Just how pricey is Indian Creek Island? According to the village’s tax rolls, the median assessed value of homes on the island in 2019 was $13.6 million. Taxes from real estate jumped 6.4% in 2019 to $87,234, along with a city property tax of $63,000. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article247709685.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article247709685.h...
- lightgreen 6y ago
  No people are not stealing food to survive. US have food banks and food stamps. People steal because they can. I don’t say people are wealthy or eat enough. I’m saying your statement about survival is untrue, and as any false statement does not help to resolve the issue.
  - givehimagun 6y ago
    People steal food because they have to survive* Fixed that for you.
    - lightgreen 6y ago
      Perhaps, our definitions of survival are very different. One might say people steal playstations to survive.
      - staplers 6y ago
        When was the last time you were unable to eat because of an income deficiency? Funny you mention "food banks" and "food stamps" during a time of unprecedented services shortage due to a pandemic. Some people are still waiting on unemployment checks from 6 months ago. Stomachs can't wait that long. An inability to use reasoning while also remaining heavily opinionated indicates you have never faced a severe economic hardship like homelessness and feel the need to shift the blame to others to avoid confronting systemic issues.
  - eggsmediumrare 6y ago
    It kinda feels like someone is paying you for this hot take. People needing food banks and food stamps is bad. It's obviously not Yemen bad. This is so obvious it's not really worth mentioning. We have moved on from pointless comparisons of degree to feeling empathy for these people and fear for what this instability will bring about.
- staplers 6y ago
  This is a pretty recurring theme in history. Read any Charles Dickins story for example.
- ericmcer 6y ago
  I never understood this because a Bezos, Musk or Gates aren’t gonna spend hundreds of millions a year buying up all the food and toilet paper. Their wealth buys them political power and influence but it shouldn’t really effect the supply chain as far as everyday basic goods are concerned. So has our productive capacity fallen to where we can no longer feed everyone? Or are we producing enough food and then just trashing the excess when people cannot be afford it? It just doesn’t all add up for me. I am a novice at economics though.
underseacables 6y ago
Many people are starving because they are locked down and not able to work, but I think that the grocery self scan that so many stores are moving towards, enables food theft; or at the very least it makes it easier. It would be interesting to see exactly how much shrinkage occurs due to the self scan.
- dheera 6y ago
  They also save a lot of money in cashier hourly labor. At least the ones that don't keep launching into "Please wait for assistance." mode every time you accidentally scan a fruit instead of entering its PLU code.
  - dmoy 6y ago
    > At least the ones that don't keep launching into "Please wait for assistance." mode every time you accidentally scan a fruit instead of entering its PLU code. or have something vaguely spherical roll off of the absurdly tiny flat space you're supposed to stack everything, with no walls I swear I'm starting to buy big white vegetable cabbage instead of green cabbage now, just because it doesn't roll.
- schrodinger 6y ago
  Might still be a net win for the store if the theft is less than the cost of employing a human cashier.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Agreed. Self check is such an obviously dumb approach, especially with high value stuff like meat. People do stuff like swap tags or enter invalid PLUs all of the time. Was that a cherry (11/lb) or a potato (0.69/lb)?
  - nostromo 6y ago
    I've wondered if it'd even be possible for them to differentiate between organic and non-organic produce. They're probably banking on people being honest in most cases, which thankfully seems to be a correct assumption.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Another thing that might be playing into the increased shoplifting is that a number of district attorneys are not prosecuting property crimes, especially things like shoplifting. Thus police have no incentive to do anything about that. Thus people know that they can get away with shoplifting so it is likely to go up.
- deleted 6y ago
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nostromo 6y ago
More Americans are shoplifting everything. Crime is up across the board this year. In my locale, it's an open secret that most retailers will not detain you if you shoplift. And it's widely known that you wouldn't be prosecuted if they did anyway. So yeah. Shoplifting is up.
- nouveaux 6y ago
  This is not just your locale. Retailers do not detain shoplifters because of liabilities. This has always been the case across the United States.
  - whythre 6y ago
    This has not always been the case. 10-15 years ago Walmart employees would detain suspected thieves or even physically subdue them.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  I weirdly found the micellar water under lock and key a few weeks ago at CVS. They lock the deodorant and tide detergent because those are highly shoplifted items. Didn't know makeup remover is now also included in that subset!
  - scruple 6y ago
    Tide is (was?) a black market currency... [0] I've seen it locked up in plenty of places, depending on the neighborhood. [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1
  - deleted 6y ago
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swiley 6y ago
The US is probably inches away from a serious catastrophy caused be the extreme inequality that's only gotten worse this year. Inequality is one thing, but when you're forced out on to the street to starve to death and there's nothing you can do to improve your situation that's totally different.
- sjg007 6y ago
  It’s the pandemic that is tripping the scale and Congress refusing to do anything.
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    > Congress refusing to do anything. Senate. House has passed stimulus packages. IMO further delineation is deserved, but contentious, so I'll leave it at that.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      Before the election the roles were reversed; it's not as black and white as you're letting on. https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-says-she-backs-smaller-stimulus-because-biden-won-rejecting-higher-offer-was-not-mistake-1552451 https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-says-she-backs-smaller-stimu...
      - jacobolus 6y ago
        The House passed the HEROES Act in mid May. The GOP Senate sat on it (and did nothing else either) for the past 7 months. Oh, except for a hearing pushing hydroxychloroquine in November, months after multiple studies had shown it ineffective, and a hearing promoting an anti-vaxer just last week. And I guess a bunch of hearings a few months ago wherein various GOP senators heaped ignorant abuse on public health officials. If your favorite small business goes under, if your local hospital collapses, if your town goes bankrupt, etc., the institutional GOP and its donors are to blame. We can all keep our fingers crossed for Georgia Senate runoffs, and for some real leadership come January.
adultSwim 6y ago
I was struck earlier this year when my local pharmacy started locking up bar soap. This isn't some expensive item to resell, like razor blades. It's a basic necessity that people are struggling to acquire.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  This isn't what you assume. Inexpensive commodity goods like soap are frequently stolen because they are much easier to fence than expensive goods, since everyone needs them including poor people. Poor people can't afford to buy expensive stolen goods, and non-poor people don't buy fenced goods generally. Non-perishable household commodities are among the most liquid stolen goods to sell, so that is what people steal. I've seen (obviously stolen) soap being peddled by apparently homeless addicts on multiple occasions. In some locales, they've been locking up the soap for a long time.
givehimagun 6y ago
As an American, I'm furious that we (American people) failed these people. I want to help - I've been blessed with a great job and I want find a way to help these people. The food bank in my region is distributing 2x the food they did last year. The director of the site mentioned how important it is to find ways to reach those who are food insecure in dignified ways. Find me more groups that want to/are helping with this problem - let's go help our fellow Americans.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Donate cash to your food bank. Mortgages, rent and utilities are all suspended almost everywhere, so are student loan payments. So hopefully people won’t be evicted and not have to worry about bills right now. But I wonder if an instacart app for food bank delivery would be a good idea. Kind of like meals on wheels. Dunno.. it would beat queuing in cars for miles. Maybe there’s a way to do crowd funded UBI... it could start around grocery stores maybe with grocery store gift cards.. Food deserts are a big thing though. It makes me think that there should be way to instacart deliver food to people.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Mortgages, rent and utilities are all suspended almost everywhere. Wait, seriously? I haven't been following events in the USA during this COVID year, but I assumed that things are like in most other developed countries with regard to things expected of people. In most European countries you still have to pay your rent and utilities every month, in spite of the noticeable economic slowdown.
    - monetus 6y ago
      An eviction moratium exists, but it doesn't cover your bills. "Almost everywhere," and "suspended", lack truthiness. As far as I know, unpaid rent and utilities will be owed. Some legislatures and housing organizations forgave periods of time, I think - that could certainly give you the impression that it is ubiquitous. Anecdotal: the food pantry near my home is often busy now; much, much more so than last year.
sanguy 6y ago
When we have politicians endorsing to defund the police, riot, and use violence and terror to get their way what do we expect? Stealing is now perfectly acceptable as it's just distribution of wealth.
- suby 6y ago
  You're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't that the police are less able to do their job and thus more people are able to get away with stealing food. The problem is that people are not able to afford food.
  - sanguy 6y ago
    Those who can't afford can get aid at the local food banks and shelters. This is no different than it has been previously. These are good people down on their luck and need help; and we need to find ways to help and preserve their dignitiy. Those blatantly stealing are the ones who don't see it as doing anything wrongful as society owes it to them. These are the same folks who riot and clean out the Targets -- it was not food being taken if you noticed. To them laws apply to others.
- givehimagun 6y ago
  I don't understand your position. Are you upset at politicians or the community that was okay with letting people starve?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    They're upset because Fox told them to be.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > defund the police Yes. If [0] is a point of debate, we need to seriously reform the police system, and defunding/demilitarizing is a good starting point. > When we have politicians endorsing ... riot, and use violence and terror Source? Encouraging protests is not the same as encouraging riots, let alone violence/terror [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/943829901/police-in-ohio-say-slain-black-man-brandished-a-gun-family-says-he-held-a-sandwi https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/943829901/police-in-ohio-say-...
matz1 6y ago
Thats what you get when business are being shutdown / not allowed to open at their full capacity.
Proven 6y ago
Why not. It worked for the BLM rioters.
slfnflctd 6y ago
This is both heartbreaking and terrifying. Mass food insecurity can be a precursor to increased violence. Where is the leadership?? I have an idea: everyone with over $20 million liquid splits the cost between them of expanding food banks and keeping them stocked. Call it a temporary COVID-19 tax and let them deduct it from their next IRS bill. [I know, I'm dreaming.]
- lightgreen 6y ago
  The US can just print money, with much better effect. It actually does that.
  - lumost 6y ago
    The US is starting to lack a credible means of delivering printed money to actual consumers.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      s/is starting to lack/has always lacked/
xyzzyz 6y ago
At the same time, personal savings rate is through the roof: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT and household debt service costs are lowest in recent history: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP People have received thousands of dollars in stimulus checks. Thanks to extra $600/$300 that the feds have added to federal unemployment, those that lost their jobs received in many cases significantly more that they were originally making, especially those making around minimum wage. At the same time, there are fewer avenues to actually spend that money, and the result of all of this is increased personal savings. No, shoplifting is not increasing because people lack cash. Rather, people do it because they can, as the justice system declines to prosecute and punish people for it. Crime rate is significantly up, and for property crime it's even worse than stats imply, because people don't bother reporting, as there's no point -- you can see that by comparing car theft rate to other property crime. Car theft is much higher, because people report most of them, as they need police report for insurance claim. All of this is, of course, entirely unsurprising.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  Second link is through 2Q20. Long time ago. Good points though
- deleted 6y ago
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- nouveaux 6y ago
  So you're saying that even though people have a ton of money in the bank, they are going to grocery stores to steal food? If they were stealing clothes or laptops, your argument makes sense. People with money in the bank do not steal food.
- twblalock 6y ago
  The stimulus stopped, and a lot of unemployed people have blown through their savings by now.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > At the same time, personal savings rate is through the roof: Yes, people that can afford to save are saving more. The people that can't afford to save are still not saving, but the people who had a surplus now have a bigger one. > People have received thousands of dollars in stimulus checks. No, people have (per person) received a maximum of either $500 (to their parent, for children under 17) or $1,200 (for adults) in stimulus checks. > Thanks to extra $600/$300 that the feds have added to federal unemployment, those that lost their jobs received in many cases significantly more that they were originally making Yes, when the $600 boost was active, that was true mostly for people making below the average state minimum wage because they live in low-CoL, low-minimum-wage states, because the additional amount was designed to move the average unemployment check nationally approximately up to full replacement. That’s true of even fewer people with the $300 boost which replaced it months ago. > No, shoplifting is not increasing because people lack cash. Rather, people do it because they can, as the justice system declines to prosecute and punish people for it. If people had equal or better ability to afford food but were just taking advantage of a law enforcement withdrawal to shoplift more food, you’d expect surveys of food insecurity, charity food lines, and other indicia of actual hunger to be unmoved and the food shoplifting to stand alone. And you would not have expected a spike when the $600 unemployment boost ended, since available money is not the issue. But those expectations would all be wrong, suggesting that money actually is the issue: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/25/long-food-lines-signal-need-for-more-coronavirus-stimulus-aid.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/25/long-food-lines-signal-need-...
theodric 6y ago
*expropriating
werber 6y ago
I hope they choose to steal from publicly traded corporate owned stores where the threat of violence or prosecution is far less.
zdragnar 6y ago
I once lived in a neigh orhood where you learned to avlid the grocery stores on certain days (especially evenings when fewer police worked), as you would be harassed by people trying to sell you their food stamps. I am sympathetic to people who don't have enough; I know several for whom food stamps and the local food shelf / food banks were thr only ways they got by, either as children or adults. However, the persistent theme running through the comments here that people are dying in the streets of starvation and noone is doing anything about it is just a myth. Blaming rich people for it just makes it worse, as if the world were so simple, black and white.
- deleted 6y ago
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kthejoker2 6y ago
Let us remember our Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to steal loaves of bread." To be alive and abundant in the wealthiest country in human history knowing this is occurring is a sin, and it is not the slightest bit of relief to know God will out.
bergstromm466 6y ago
The real shoplifting, of course, is capitalism. Just because some people draw a few boundaries and say 'this is mine' (enclosure) does not mean it is fair. The police and other (state) actors, who have a monopoly on violence, are there to protect capitalist private property (stuff owned by big corps). "You know, Bill Gates wants you to think that his foundation is the only way to get stuff done. But if we lived in a world that had more democratic, accountable structures, these problems wouldn’t have been created in the first place. So it matters because the tech industry is so powerful, it’s so wealthy and it scales so quickly. And it’s doing this mostly in a black box. Most of the decisions being made are not made public. And people who are not part of the industry, have no say in it. It’s changing the world and none of us have been consulted about whether or not we’re ok with the changes being made."[1] [1] https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/48506/1/why-we-must-rebuild-toxic-tech-industry-abolish-silicon-valley-wendy-liu https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/48506/1/wh...
- deleted 6y ago
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- Serious_Cheese 6y ago
  It's sad to see HN users just downvote something they don't agree with instead of responding to the arguments made berg. berg, what other options do we have besides capitalism? We saw how millions of people died of starvation with communist/socialists societies.
  - strken 6y ago
    Often, downvotes are about the way an opinion is presented, not the opinion itself. Saying that capitalism is the real shoplifting is vague and unproductive, and it doesn't contain a counterproposal, so as a statement it's hard to engage with. If the GP had come up with a proposal for how to fix this, which would probably have meant elaborating on how to completely abolish all private property in the context of the modern US, I think the post would not have been so heavily downvoted.
    - 6y ago
anonunivgrad 6y ago
More and more cities and even states are adopting laws that essentially decriminalize shoplifting below $500 or $1000 worth of merchandise. Open air shoplifted-products markets now exist in major American cities. This is purely a political decision, not some pressing economic need. This is the result of the agenda of these DAs elected on aggressively progressive platforms.
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  That sounds extremely unlikely to me - do you have any references? Looking through gNews for 'shoplifiting' I see things like [1] which average around $100 or less and those were arrests. 1: https://www.cleveland.com/community/2020/12/lorain-woman-with-warrants-arrested-for-shoplifting-brooklyn-police-blotter.html https://www.cleveland.com/community/2020/12/lorain-woman-wit...
  - anonunivgrad 6y ago
    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/phillys-new-top-prosecutor-is-rolling-out-wild-unprecedented-criminal-justice-reforms.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/phillys-new-top-... And since then, many other cities have followed suit. Contrary to popular belief, almost no one is actually in jail for small time drug possession, so reducing “mass incarceration” means reducing or eliminating penalties for real crime.
  - GauntletWizard 6y ago
    Here's one example of this kind of opportunistic shoplifting[1], though for online retail purposes, not open air markets. Those most certainly do exist in San Francisco, though. Wander (In better times, not so much with Covid) the Mission District, Outer Richmond, the Haight - Just off the beaten path will be street vendors. There will always be a "Discount homegoods" with an eclectic collection of drugs, toiletries, etc. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-francisco-bay-area-retail-theft-ring-busted-five-suspects-arrested-8-million-in-stolen-merchandise-recovered/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...
wnevets 6y ago
yeah but the stock market is doing great and isn't that really what matters?
throwawaysea 6y ago
I can tell you that in Seattle shoplifting, vandalism, burglaries, car thefts, and other crimes take place all the time and it is not because someone is down on their luck and actually in need of basics like food. The increased crime has been induced for the following reasons: 1. Drug addicted vagrants are ubiquitous because the city doesn't enforce laws and instead enables this lifestyle by looking the other way. These addicts very often steal things like food that are easy to fence and barter for drugs. 2. Our city and county prosecutors don't actually bring charges/accountability against criminals. 3. The police department has far fewer officers per capita than comparable cities, and simply cannot spend time on investigating and catching suspects. The revolving door of people committing low-level crimes is so bad that Seattle businesses have released reports on this problem (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752913-SYSTEM-FAILURE-Prolific-Offender-Report-February.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752913-SYSTEM-FAILU...) and written letters to politicians asking for help (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752914-Prolific-Offenders-Report-Transmittal-Letter-2.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752914-Prolific-Off...) only to be ignored. Unfortunately the growing problem of low-level crimes with no consequence for criminals has also jaded residents to the point that they don't even bother reporting most property crimes - after all, if criminals don't face consequences and insurance requires a deductible, there is simply no benefit to spending time on reporting things. I don't doubt that some number of people who are shoplifting food are trying to be productive members of society, displaying personal responsibility, and just need some support to get back on their feet. For them, I hope we can improve programs like SNAP (https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assista...) to provide more benefits (higher spending limits for healthier food) with less red tape (less stringent eligibility requirements). But around me and in other West coast cities I've been to, those committing these crimes are very often not deserving of sympathy and are willfully not being good citizens. To bring the constituency on board, we need to address both sides of this equation. We need to start enforcing laws and holding criminals accountable, while helping those who are deserving and in need. Otherwise, the rest of us are not going to be onboard with simply allowing criminals to commit crime.
onecommentman 6y ago
On a more productive note Stigler diet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16524061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16524061 Subreddit on eating healthy on a cheap budget https://old.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ For anyone who put themselves through college, this is much more a shrug than a clarion call for revolution. You can eat cheaply and well with a little effort and creativity. Good training for starting out with a young family, if any of you ever get to that point. If you haven’t learned to cook, now is a good time. Electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, etc.. Learn to manage your time to make time for meal prep and cooking. Lots of folks take it as a challenge and love to share tips. Shop carefully, share car trips to the cheaper stores, share a Costco membership. The sharing economy isn’t just about obscene IPOs. As an extreme anchor point for calibration, .5 kg/day of dried corn to meet RDA calories for adult http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/calories-in-corn.php http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/calories-in-corn.php -> 200 kg/yr to meet RDA calories for year Corn is 4.30/bu spot price US A bushel of corn is 25 kg. So $40/yr to meet caloric requirements for an adult for a year with a car trunk full of dried corn. Some of us have heritages that basically did that. [Not recommended as a strict diet unless you are a fan of diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death. Limewater is your friend. Webpage not for the squeamish... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra] Now add/substitute soybeans, cabbage, carrots, bulk spices, vitamins. Beans 27 kg for 11.50 nowadays. You are in the $100-200/yr range without adverse health effects...maybe healthier than what you are eating now. There were times your ancestors would, and did, kill for the chance at such a diet. (And the CCP couldn’t even manage that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine ) Unsheltered? The problem is shelter...basic food for a year is less than three months of utilities, much less rent.
Cyberthal 6y ago
One may infer which Americans are shoplifting by noting the geographic distribution of urban food deserts and the surrounding gradient of obstructive retail security. Food insecurity implies potential for violence, and urban food deserts are practically unprecedented. One may call it a unique American achievement in urban planning. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0276146715612550 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0276146715612550 This promises interesting times when just-in-time delivery inevitably arrives a day late and a dollar short. Just kidding, the USD is the first forever currency of the USG, the first forever empire. What's the worst that could happen? Cities such as Baltimore and Detroit have already seen the process play out. It makes for interesting reading, from a safe distance. Like a slow-motion forest fire, as the conflagration spreads outwards, new growth sprouts defiantly from the charred center. I wouldn't call it a natural process, but it resembles one. Do the inner cities of other countries lie in ruins for decades, or is that an American thing?
shthroaway 6y ago
So throwaway account here for obvious reasons. I shoplift quite a bit of food from my local Walmart, not necessarily out of need, but simply because it is very very easy. This Walmart has at least 10-15 checkout lanes that are always empty and instead have a handful of people "Keep watch" of the self checkout lanes in an effort to keep the bare minimum amount of people employed. Most of the time they are too busy authorizing Alcohol and helping people to actually notice if anyone isn't scanning sometihng. In fact one time one commented to me that "They don't pay me enough to care about shoplifting" after I "accidentally" forgot to scan something. I don't really feel any pity for Walmart though, they have a bad system and have taken into account that the amount of money lost through shoplifting is less than it would cost to employ more people.

110 points by awnird 6y ago

>“People will say, ‘I was just hungry.’ And then what do you do?” People stealing food to survive while the super wealthy and rich becoming richer and richer[1]. What a great time to be alive. [1](https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/11/18/elon-musk-passes-mark-zuckerberg-to-become-the-worlds-fourth-richest-person/?sh=737e65404bec https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/11/18/elon...) EDIT: I don't particularly dislike Elon (the man has done alot of good), but he was the easiest example I could think of. Stock market is a better indicator of rich people's wealth.

ku-man 6y ago
Well, it's not like it was different at any point of history (unless you consider the most primitive civilizations.)
8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
Not that Elon Musk doesn't have plenty of flaws that people online will be happy to spill much ink about, but what does that have to do with widespread poverty on a national level? Does the US not have a government and state-level and federal-level representatives whose job it is to take care of their citizens and keep them out of starvation? Elon Musk and his pals seem like a convenient distraction from holding accountable people whose job it is to protect their constituents.
- tempsy 6y ago
  Agree that blaming individuals makes no sense. It's the system that is pushing the poorest into more debt and insecurity while making the rich richer that is the problem. A lot of talk about building a healthy middle class but we've lost track of that goal decades ago.
  - staplers 6y ago
    Except those people heavily dictate how the system operates. "Systems" don't just operate without human input or decision-making.
- owenmarshall 6y ago
  > Does the US not have a government and state-level and federal-level representatives whose job it is to take care of their citizens and keep them out of starvation? It’s patently obvious that no, the US does not.
- brundolf 6y ago
  Many of those wealthy individuals (or their companies, at least) have lobbied to ensure that we don't have a government which takes upon itself to keep citizens out of starvation. Not sure about Elon Musk specifically, but politicians don't just magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents.
  - et-al 6y ago
    To spell it out for those in the back: reducing tax rates reduces the government's ability to fund public projects. i.e. roads, schools, and safety nets like food banks. Also, the responsibility of feeding children has fallen upon schools in some areas. When SF closed schools in March 2020, one of the issues they had to address was "how do we feed the kids?" https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/sfusd-provide-free-meals-students-during-closure-schools https://www.sfusd.edu/about/news/current-news/sfusd-provide-...
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Politicians magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents whenever they think they can get away with it, unless they're saints - and not many saints are politicians. The better question might be, why do they think they can get away with it? Why do they get away with it? (By the way, note that this is not just a problem with one party...)
    - brundolf 6y ago
      Whenever they can get away with it and it's in their best interest (thanks to lobbyists). If they don't get anything out of it, they may as well take the free goodwill from voters.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Yeah, maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect that there's always some lobbyists willing to make it worth any politician's time to do what's not in the voters' interest.
- mempko 6y ago
  Because money is power and it's clear people like Musk have a bigger responsibility to push for an accountable government.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Are you sure? I like Elon Musk quite a bit, and even I don't think he should go around telling politicians what to do. That's not what we as a society have businesspeople for.
    - mempko 6y ago
      I agree with you. However, there is the world we want and the world we live in. Until we have an actual democracy (which likely won't have billionaires, look into what happens in popular movements in the past) then Musk has an outside responsibility to society because he has outsized power.
- JoshTko 6y ago
  Agree it's unfair to single out Elon. But Elon has clearly been anti-union for a long while and has building factories in states with low union presence. He's undoubtedly contributing to income inequality via corporate policies. The cumulative pressure by major companies on congress is probably the single main reason why congress does not enact stronger protection. We got corporate tax cuts because of this over say better employment protection laws. Disclosure: am a Tesla stockholder.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  No. We have representatives whose job it is to serve their campaign donors. Musk is a leech, but someone with that much money has political influence.
angrais 6y ago
Could be worse, e.g., any prior point in time on average ...
Merman_Mike 6y ago
> Meanwhile, an estimated 54 million Americans will struggle with hunger this year, a 45 percent increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With food aid programs like SNAP and WIC being reduced, and other federal assistance on the brink of expiration, food banks and pantries are being inundated, reporting hours-long waits and lines that stretch into the thousands. And meanwhile, in the other America: > When Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump start building their new home on the 1.8-acre lot at 4 Indian Creek Island Road that they purchased for $30 million, they’ll have plenty of equally famous neighbors to get to know. > Indian Creek Island, sometimes called “Miami’s Billionaire Bunker,” is home to an eclectic group of some of the world’s wealthiest, from singers to hedge fund managers, inventors to developers — even the founder of a company dedicated to collecting blood donations. > Just how pricey is Indian Creek Island? According to the village’s tax rolls, the median assessed value of homes on the island in 2019 was $13.6 million. Taxes from real estate jumped 6.4% in 2019 to $87,234, along with a city property tax of $63,000. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article247709685.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article247709685.h...
lightgreen 6y ago
No people are not stealing food to survive. US have food banks and food stamps. People steal because they can. I don’t say people are wealthy or eat enough. I’m saying your statement about survival is untrue, and as any false statement does not help to resolve the issue.
- givehimagun 6y ago
  People steal food because they have to survive* Fixed that for you.
  - lightgreen 6y ago
    Perhaps, our definitions of survival are very different. One might say people steal playstations to survive.
    - staplers 6y ago
      When was the last time you were unable to eat because of an income deficiency? Funny you mention "food banks" and "food stamps" during a time of unprecedented services shortage due to a pandemic. Some people are still waiting on unemployment checks from 6 months ago. Stomachs can't wait that long. An inability to use reasoning while also remaining heavily opinionated indicates you have never faced a severe economic hardship like homelessness and feel the need to shift the blame to others to avoid confronting systemic issues.
- eggsmediumrare 6y ago
  It kinda feels like someone is paying you for this hot take. People needing food banks and food stamps is bad. It's obviously not Yemen bad. This is so obvious it's not really worth mentioning. We have moved on from pointless comparisons of degree to feeling empathy for these people and fear for what this instability will bring about.
staplers 6y ago
This is a pretty recurring theme in history. Read any Charles Dickins story for example.
ericmcer 6y ago
I never understood this because a Bezos, Musk or Gates aren’t gonna spend hundreds of millions a year buying up all the food and toilet paper. Their wealth buys them political power and influence but it shouldn’t really effect the supply chain as far as everyday basic goods are concerned. So has our productive capacity fallen to where we can no longer feed everyone? Or are we producing enough food and then just trashing the excess when people cannot be afford it? It just doesn’t all add up for me. I am a novice at economics though.

underseacables 6y ago

Many people are starving because they are locked down and not able to work, but I think that the grocery self scan that so many stores are moving towards, enables food theft; or at the very least it makes it easier. It would be interesting to see exactly how much shrinkage occurs due to the self scan.

dheera 6y ago
They also save a lot of money in cashier hourly labor. At least the ones that don't keep launching into "Please wait for assistance." mode every time you accidentally scan a fruit instead of entering its PLU code.
- dmoy 6y ago
  > At least the ones that don't keep launching into "Please wait for assistance." mode every time you accidentally scan a fruit instead of entering its PLU code. or have something vaguely spherical roll off of the absurdly tiny flat space you're supposed to stack everything, with no walls I swear I'm starting to buy big white vegetable cabbage instead of green cabbage now, just because it doesn't roll.
schrodinger 6y ago
Might still be a net win for the store if the theft is less than the cost of employing a human cashier.
Spooky23 6y ago
Agreed. Self check is such an obviously dumb approach, especially with high value stuff like meat. People do stuff like swap tags or enter invalid PLUs all of the time. Was that a cherry (11/lb) or a potato (0.69/lb)?
- nostromo 6y ago
  I've wondered if it'd even be possible for them to differentiate between organic and non-organic produce. They're probably banking on people being honest in most cases, which thankfully seems to be a correct assumption.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Another thing that might be playing into the increased shoplifting is that a number of district attorneys are not prosecuting property crimes, especially things like shoplifting. Thus police have no incentive to do anything about that. Thus people know that they can get away with shoplifting so it is likely to go up.

deleted 6y ago
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nostromo 6y ago

More Americans are shoplifting everything. Crime is up across the board this year. In my locale, it's an open secret that most retailers will not detain you if you shoplift. And it's widely known that you wouldn't be prosecuted if they did anyway. So yeah. Shoplifting is up.

nouveaux 6y ago
This is not just your locale. Retailers do not detain shoplifters because of liabilities. This has always been the case across the United States.
- whythre 6y ago
  This has not always been the case. 10-15 years ago Walmart employees would detain suspected thieves or even physically subdue them.
randycupertino 6y ago
I weirdly found the micellar water under lock and key a few weeks ago at CVS. They lock the deodorant and tide detergent because those are highly shoplifted items. Didn't know makeup remover is now also included in that subset!
- scruple 6y ago
  Tide is (was?) a black market currency... [0] I've seen it locked up in plenty of places, depending on the neighborhood. [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

swiley 6y ago

The US is probably inches away from a serious catastrophy caused be the extreme inequality that's only gotten worse this year. Inequality is one thing, but when you're forced out on to the street to starve to death and there's nothing you can do to improve your situation that's totally different.

sjg007 6y ago
It’s the pandemic that is tripping the scale and Congress refusing to do anything.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  > Congress refusing to do anything. Senate. House has passed stimulus packages. IMO further delineation is deserved, but contentious, so I'll leave it at that.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Before the election the roles were reversed; it's not as black and white as you're letting on. https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-says-she-backs-smaller-stimulus-because-biden-won-rejecting-higher-offer-was-not-mistake-1552451 https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-says-she-backs-smaller-stimu...
    - jacobolus 6y ago
      The House passed the HEROES Act in mid May. The GOP Senate sat on it (and did nothing else either) for the past 7 months. Oh, except for a hearing pushing hydroxychloroquine in November, months after multiple studies had shown it ineffective, and a hearing promoting an anti-vaxer just last week. And I guess a bunch of hearings a few months ago wherein various GOP senators heaped ignorant abuse on public health officials. If your favorite small business goes under, if your local hospital collapses, if your town goes bankrupt, etc., the institutional GOP and its donors are to blame. We can all keep our fingers crossed for Georgia Senate runoffs, and for some real leadership come January.

adultSwim 6y ago

I was struck earlier this year when my local pharmacy started locking up bar soap. This isn't some expensive item to resell, like razor blades. It's a basic necessity that people are struggling to acquire.

jandrewrogers 6y ago
This isn't what you assume. Inexpensive commodity goods like soap are frequently stolen because they are much easier to fence than expensive goods, since everyone needs them including poor people. Poor people can't afford to buy expensive stolen goods, and non-poor people don't buy fenced goods generally. Non-perishable household commodities are among the most liquid stolen goods to sell, so that is what people steal. I've seen (obviously stolen) soap being peddled by apparently homeless addicts on multiple occasions. In some locales, they've been locking up the soap for a long time.

givehimagun 6y ago

As an American, I'm furious that we (American people) failed these people. I want to help - I've been blessed with a great job and I want find a way to help these people. The food bank in my region is distributing 2x the food they did last year. The director of the site mentioned how important it is to find ways to reach those who are food insecure in dignified ways. Find me more groups that want to/are helping with this problem - let's go help our fellow Americans.

sjg007 6y ago
Donate cash to your food bank. Mortgages, rent and utilities are all suspended almost everywhere, so are student loan payments. So hopefully people won’t be evicted and not have to worry about bills right now. But I wonder if an instacart app for food bank delivery would be a good idea. Kind of like meals on wheels. Dunno.. it would beat queuing in cars for miles. Maybe there’s a way to do crowd funded UBI... it could start around grocery stores maybe with grocery store gift cards.. Food deserts are a big thing though. It makes me think that there should be way to instacart deliver food to people.
- deleted 6y ago
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- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Mortgages, rent and utilities are all suspended almost everywhere. Wait, seriously? I haven't been following events in the USA during this COVID year, but I assumed that things are like in most other developed countries with regard to things expected of people. In most European countries you still have to pay your rent and utilities every month, in spite of the noticeable economic slowdown.
  - monetus 6y ago
    An eviction moratium exists, but it doesn't cover your bills. "Almost everywhere," and "suspended", lack truthiness. As far as I know, unpaid rent and utilities will be owed. Some legislatures and housing organizations forgave periods of time, I think - that could certainly give you the impression that it is ubiquitous. Anecdotal: the food pantry near my home is often busy now; much, much more so than last year.

sanguy 6y ago

When we have politicians endorsing to defund the police, riot, and use violence and terror to get their way what do we expect? Stealing is now perfectly acceptable as it's just distribution of wealth.

suby 6y ago
You're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't that the police are less able to do their job and thus more people are able to get away with stealing food. The problem is that people are not able to afford food.
- sanguy 6y ago
  Those who can't afford can get aid at the local food banks and shelters. This is no different than it has been previously. These are good people down on their luck and need help; and we need to find ways to help and preserve their dignitiy. Those blatantly stealing are the ones who don't see it as doing anything wrongful as society owes it to them. These are the same folks who riot and clean out the Targets -- it was not food being taken if you noticed. To them laws apply to others.
givehimagun 6y ago
I don't understand your position. Are you upset at politicians or the community that was okay with letting people starve?
- Shared404 6y ago
  They're upset because Fox told them to be.
Shared404 6y ago
> defund the police Yes. If [0] is a point of debate, we need to seriously reform the police system, and defunding/demilitarizing is a good starting point. > When we have politicians endorsing ... riot, and use violence and terror Source? Encouraging protests is not the same as encouraging riots, let alone violence/terror [0] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/943829901/police-in-ohio-say-slain-black-man-brandished-a-gun-family-says-he-held-a-sandwi https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/943829901/police-in-ohio-say-...

matz1 6y ago

Thats what you get when business are being shutdown / not allowed to open at their full capacity.

Proven 6y ago

Why not. It worked for the BLM rioters.

slfnflctd 6y ago

This is both heartbreaking and terrifying. Mass food insecurity can be a precursor to increased violence. Where is the leadership?? I have an idea: everyone with over $20 million liquid splits the cost between them of expanding food banks and keeping them stocked. Call it a temporary COVID-19 tax and let them deduct it from their next IRS bill. [I know, I'm dreaming.]

lightgreen 6y ago
The US can just print money, with much better effect. It actually does that.
- lumost 6y ago
  The US is starting to lack a credible means of delivering printed money to actual consumers.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    s/is starting to lack/has always lacked/

xyzzyz 6y ago

At the same time, personal savings rate is through the roof: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT and household debt service costs are lowest in recent history: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP People have received thousands of dollars in stimulus checks. Thanks to extra $600/$300 that the feds have added to federal unemployment, those that lost their jobs received in many cases significantly more that they were originally making, especially those making around minimum wage. At the same time, there are fewer avenues to actually spend that money, and the result of all of this is increased personal savings. No, shoplifting is not increasing because people lack cash. Rather, people do it because they can, as the justice system declines to prosecute and punish people for it. Crime rate is significantly up, and for property crime it's even worse than stats imply, because people don't bother reporting, as there's no point -- you can see that by comparing car theft rate to other property crime. Car theft is much higher, because people report most of them, as they need police report for insurance claim. All of this is, of course, entirely unsurprising.

texasbigdata 6y ago
Second link is through 2Q20. Long time ago. Good points though
deleted 6y ago
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nouveaux 6y ago
So you're saying that even though people have a ton of money in the bank, they are going to grocery stores to steal food? If they were stealing clothes or laptops, your argument makes sense. People with money in the bank do not steal food.
twblalock 6y ago
The stimulus stopped, and a lot of unemployed people have blown through their savings by now.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> At the same time, personal savings rate is through the roof: Yes, people that can afford to save are saving more. The people that can't afford to save are still not saving, but the people who had a surplus now have a bigger one. > People have received thousands of dollars in stimulus checks. No, people have (per person) received a maximum of either $500 (to their parent, for children under 17) or $1,200 (for adults) in stimulus checks. > Thanks to extra $600/$300 that the feds have added to federal unemployment, those that lost their jobs received in many cases significantly more that they were originally making Yes, when the $600 boost was active, that was true mostly for people making below the average state minimum wage because they live in low-CoL, low-minimum-wage states, because the additional amount was designed to move the average unemployment check nationally approximately up to full replacement. That’s true of even fewer people with the $300 boost which replaced it months ago. > No, shoplifting is not increasing because people lack cash. Rather, people do it because they can, as the justice system declines to prosecute and punish people for it. If people had equal or better ability to afford food but were just taking advantage of a law enforcement withdrawal to shoplift more food, you’d expect surveys of food insecurity, charity food lines, and other indicia of actual hunger to be unmoved and the food shoplifting to stand alone. And you would not have expected a spike when the $600 unemployment boost ended, since available money is not the issue. But those expectations would all be wrong, suggesting that money actually is the issue: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/25/long-food-lines-signal-need-for-more-coronavirus-stimulus-aid.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/25/long-food-lines-signal-need-...

theodric 6y ago

*expropriating

werber 6y ago

I hope they choose to steal from publicly traded corporate owned stores where the threat of violence or prosecution is far less.

zdragnar 6y ago

I once lived in a neigh orhood where you learned to avlid the grocery stores on certain days (especially evenings when fewer police worked), as you would be harassed by people trying to sell you their food stamps. I am sympathetic to people who don't have enough; I know several for whom food stamps and the local food shelf / food banks were thr only ways they got by, either as children or adults. However, the persistent theme running through the comments here that people are dying in the streets of starvation and noone is doing anything about it is just a myth. Blaming rich people for it just makes it worse, as if the world were so simple, black and white.

deleted 6y ago
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kthejoker2 6y ago

Let us remember our Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to steal loaves of bread." To be alive and abundant in the wealthiest country in human history knowing this is occurring is a sin, and it is not the slightest bit of relief to know God will out.

bergstromm466 6y ago

The real shoplifting, of course, is capitalism. Just because some people draw a few boundaries and say 'this is mine' (enclosure) does not mean it is fair. The police and other (state) actors, who have a monopoly on violence, are there to protect capitalist private property (stuff owned by big corps). "You know, Bill Gates wants you to think that his foundation is the only way to get stuff done. But if we lived in a world that had more democratic, accountable structures, these problems wouldn’t have been created in the first place. So it matters because the tech industry is so powerful, it’s so wealthy and it scales so quickly. And it’s doing this mostly in a black box. Most of the decisions being made are not made public. And people who are not part of the industry, have no say in it. It’s changing the world and none of us have been consulted about whether or not we’re ok with the changes being made."[1] [1] https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/48506/1/why-we-must-rebuild-toxic-tech-industry-abolish-silicon-valley-wendy-liu https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/48506/1/wh...

deleted 6y ago
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Serious_Cheese 6y ago
It's sad to see HN users just downvote something they don't agree with instead of responding to the arguments made berg. berg, what other options do we have besides capitalism? We saw how millions of people died of starvation with communist/socialists societies.
- strken 6y ago
  Often, downvotes are about the way an opinion is presented, not the opinion itself. Saying that capitalism is the real shoplifting is vague and unproductive, and it doesn't contain a counterproposal, so as a statement it's hard to engage with. If the GP had come up with a proposal for how to fix this, which would probably have meant elaborating on how to completely abolish all private property in the context of the modern US, I think the post would not have been so heavily downvoted.
  - 6y ago

anonunivgrad 6y ago

More and more cities and even states are adopting laws that essentially decriminalize shoplifting below $500 or $1000 worth of merchandise. Open air shoplifted-products markets now exist in major American cities. This is purely a political decision, not some pressing economic need. This is the result of the agenda of these DAs elected on aggressively progressive platforms.

blacksmith_tb 6y ago
That sounds extremely unlikely to me - do you have any references? Looking through gNews for 'shoplifiting' I see things like [1] which average around $100 or less and those were arrests. 1: https://www.cleveland.com/community/2020/12/lorain-woman-with-warrants-arrested-for-shoplifting-brooklyn-police-blotter.html https://www.cleveland.com/community/2020/12/lorain-woman-wit...
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/phillys-new-top-prosecutor-is-rolling-out-wild-unprecedented-criminal-justice-reforms.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/phillys-new-top-... And since then, many other cities have followed suit. Contrary to popular belief, almost no one is actually in jail for small time drug possession, so reducing “mass incarceration” means reducing or eliminating penalties for real crime.
- GauntletWizard 6y ago
  Here's one example of this kind of opportunistic shoplifting[1], though for online retail purposes, not open air markets. Those most certainly do exist in San Francisco, though. Wander (In better times, not so much with Covid) the Mission District, Outer Richmond, the Haight - Just off the beaten path will be street vendors. There will always be a "Discount homegoods" with an eclectic collection of drugs, toiletries, etc. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-francisco-bay-area-retail-theft-ring-busted-five-suspects-arrested-8-million-in-stolen-merchandise-recovered/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...

wnevets 6y ago

yeah but the stock market is doing great and isn't that really what matters?

throwawaysea 6y ago

I can tell you that in Seattle shoplifting, vandalism, burglaries, car thefts, and other crimes take place all the time and it is not because someone is down on their luck and actually in need of basics like food. The increased crime has been induced for the following reasons: 1. Drug addicted vagrants are ubiquitous because the city doesn't enforce laws and instead enables this lifestyle by looking the other way. These addicts very often steal things like food that are easy to fence and barter for drugs. 2. Our city and county prosecutors don't actually bring charges/accountability against criminals. 3. The police department has far fewer officers per capita than comparable cities, and simply cannot spend time on investigating and catching suspects. The revolving door of people committing low-level crimes is so bad that Seattle businesses have released reports on this problem (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752913-SYSTEM-FAILURE-Prolific-Offender-Report-February.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752913-SYSTEM-FAILU...) and written letters to politicians asking for help (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752914-Prolific-Offenders-Report-Transmittal-Letter-2.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5752914-Prolific-Off...) only to be ignored. Unfortunately the growing problem of low-level crimes with no consequence for criminals has also jaded residents to the point that they don't even bother reporting most property crimes - after all, if criminals don't face consequences and insurance requires a deductible, there is simply no benefit to spending time on reporting things. I don't doubt that some number of people who are shoplifting food are trying to be productive members of society, displaying personal responsibility, and just need some support to get back on their feet. For them, I hope we can improve programs like SNAP (https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assista...) to provide more benefits (higher spending limits for healthier food) with less red tape (less stringent eligibility requirements). But around me and in other West coast cities I've been to, those committing these crimes are very often not deserving of sympathy and are willfully not being good citizens. To bring the constituency on board, we need to address both sides of this equation. We need to start enforcing laws and holding criminals accountable, while helping those who are deserving and in need. Otherwise, the rest of us are not going to be onboard with simply allowing criminals to commit crime.

onecommentman 6y ago

On a more productive note Stigler diet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16524061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16524061 Subreddit on eating healthy on a cheap budget https://old.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ For anyone who put themselves through college, this is much more a shrug than a clarion call for revolution. You can eat cheaply and well with a little effort and creativity. Good training for starting out with a young family, if any of you ever get to that point. If you haven’t learned to cook, now is a good time. Electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, etc.. Learn to manage your time to make time for meal prep and cooking. Lots of folks take it as a challenge and love to share tips. Shop carefully, share car trips to the cheaper stores, share a Costco membership. The sharing economy isn’t just about obscene IPOs. As an extreme anchor point for calibration, .5 kg/day of dried corn to meet RDA calories for adult http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/calories-in-corn.php http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/calories-in-corn.php -> 200 kg/yr to meet RDA calories for year Corn is 4.30/bu spot price US A bushel of corn is 25 kg. So $40/yr to meet caloric requirements for an adult for a year with a car trunk full of dried corn. Some of us have heritages that basically did that. [Not recommended as a strict diet unless you are a fan of diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death. Limewater is your friend. Webpage not for the squeamish... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra] Now add/substitute soybeans, cabbage, carrots, bulk spices, vitamins. Beans 27 kg for 11.50 nowadays. You are in the $100-200/yr range without adverse health effects...maybe healthier than what you are eating now. There were times your ancestors would, and did, kill for the chance at such a diet. (And the CCP couldn’t even manage that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine ) Unsheltered? The problem is shelter...basic food for a year is less than three months of utilities, much less rent.

Cyberthal 6y ago

One may infer which Americans are shoplifting by noting the geographic distribution of urban food deserts and the surrounding gradient of obstructive retail security. Food insecurity implies potential for violence, and urban food deserts are practically unprecedented. One may call it a unique American achievement in urban planning. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0276146715612550 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0276146715612550 This promises interesting times when just-in-time delivery inevitably arrives a day late and a dollar short. Just kidding, the USD is the first forever currency of the USG, the first forever empire. What's the worst that could happen? Cities such as Baltimore and Detroit have already seen the process play out. It makes for interesting reading, from a safe distance. Like a slow-motion forest fire, as the conflagration spreads outwards, new growth sprouts defiantly from the charred center. I wouldn't call it a natural process, but it resembles one. Do the inner cities of other countries lie in ruins for decades, or is that an American thing?

shthroaway 6y ago

So throwaway account here for obvious reasons. I shoplift quite a bit of food from my local Walmart, not necessarily out of need, but simply because it is very very easy. This Walmart has at least 10-15 checkout lanes that are always empty and instead have a handful of people "Keep watch" of the self checkout lanes in an effort to keep the bare minimum amount of people employed. Most of the time they are too busy authorizing Alcohol and helping people to actually notice if anyone isn't scanning sometihng. In fact one time one commented to me that "They don't pay me enough to care about shoplifting" after I "accidentally" forgot to scan something. I don't really feel any pity for Walmart though, they have a bad system and have taken into account that the amount of money lost through shoplifting is less than it would cost to employ more people.