• MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Most of the “riots” people have complained about in the past 5 years have been directly caused by police existing in the way that it does. I can’t deny that police serve as a deterrent for some people regarding some things, but I don’t think I’d live much differently. I’d probably shoplift from big box stores occasionally, but not out of greed. It’s about taking money, not making money. If everybody stole a can of food from Walmart every day to give to the hungry, there would be no more hungry and Walmart would still make billions.

    • dice@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      That’s absurd. 250 million weekly visitors stealing a $1 item per visit would amount to $13B per year in losses, approximately equal to Walmart’s annual net income. They would love to raise prices to compensate (2% should do it) but then they would lose the equivalent in sales to competitors like Amazon that don’t face as much risk from theft losses.

      • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        False. Walmart makes about $600 BILLION per year.

        Idk where you found the $13B figure, since that’s less than the amount they made OVER the previous year’s earnings.

        I know what you’re thinking: “but that’s revenue, not profit!” Okay sure, and let’s not even address what qualifies as a “loss” for a massive business like Walmart because I don’t even need to get into that to make my point. Still, they profited nearly $150B in 2022, source is the same link but lower on the page.

        Walmart makes over $250k per employee, and nearly 15k of those employees are on food stamps, which means that our tax dollars are being used to subsidize their exploited labor force to make them 12-figure profits.

        So yeah, I think we’re kinda sorta morally obligated to steal from them in order to feed the hungry that they are responsible for making hungry in the first fucking place.

        • JWBananas@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          Idk where you found the $13B figure, since that’s less than the amount they made OVER the previous year’s earnings.

          I pulled this from your link:

          Revenue

          $611.3B

          Net Income

          $11,680,000,000