Robert Bridge – Strategic Review Sept 15, 2023
The future of shopping will no longer occur inside of shopping malls, boutiques, and business districts, Robert Bridge writes.
Many people have probably heard about the viral epidemic that is sweeping America, bringing mask-wearing back into fashion once again. No, it’s not Covid-19, at least not yet, but rather organized retail theft that is wreaking havoc on the nation’s heartland.
Back in the Soviet days, before mega malls and hyper-stores became prominent features across Russia’s 11 time zones, communist shoppers were forced to choose merchandise that was locked away behind display cases. A clerk would write down the price of each desired item and the shopper would take the piece of paper to the cashier, pay for the merchandise and then return to the salesperson with proof of purchase. Only then would the beetroot, bread and vodka be handed over. Times they are a changin’. Incredibly, and not a little ironically, the United States seems to be heading for such a grim, dystopian shopping experience.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed shoppers’ worst fears when they reported in a recent article, “stores have fewer workers than they used to, and are resorting to keeping more of their products locked up.” In modern America, the need to lock up merchandise is due to flash mob heists that are costing retailers millions of dollars each year, while threatening the very existence of the big-box and small-box merchandisers. The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that these incidents cost companies about $700,000 for every $1 billion in sales.
For the uninitiated, a flash mob heist is when a large gang of hoodlums, typically young and reckless, enter a store all at once and ‘smash-and-grab’ whatever merchandise they can before the police arrive on the scene, which almost never happens. What does happen is that employees and shoppers are left to stare on in disbelief as the mob beats a line of mass destruction around the store and back to the exits with as much items as their arms can carry. The reason this method has proven so popular is because the thieves are rarely caught; in the event that they are caught, liberal judges will set them free without punishment.
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Last month in Los Angeles, a group of over thirty men and women dressed in black and gray stormed the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga Mall. The thieves knew what they were doing and made a beeline for the luxury handbags, clothing, and jewelry, shocking onlookers as they smashed glass display cases to grab handfuls of jewelry. In a matter of minutes much of the store was gutted. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, nearly $300,000 worth of merchandise was removed.
While previously a crime phenomenon relegated to California, flash mob crime sprees have sprung up around the nation. Chicago, for example, has put a new twist on the phenomenon, introducing something known as ‘flash mob robbery crews.’ These gangs travel around the city in caravans and rob pedestrians in broad daylight on the street, sometimes eight or more people at a time.
Thus, in one fell swoop, one of the glorious hallmarks of capitalism, when consumers could casually stroll along business districts and store aisles, hunting and gathering without the need for a middleman to tediously unlock cases, is beginning to look more like a page lifted from Das Kapital. Naturally, this brave new state of affairs is proving to be a nightmare for store owners as well.
In addition to having to fork over additional funds to lock down their products, while beefing up security to protect decent folks from thuggery, retailers also must cope with “the steepest annual wage growth since the 1980s,” according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Average wages in the retail sector have now risen to about $20.54 per hour, the report says. Not enough, however, to entice the young crooks to give up their life of crime for a 9-to-5 existence. There probably wouldn’t be jobs available for them anyways as retailers have had to give their staff a haircut, with employment figures below their pre-pandemic staffing levels.
“Retail sales workers fell 12% from 2019 to 2022 and stores like Macy’s and Kohl’s have lost as many as 20% of their staff,” Zerohedge reported. “Gap and Best Buy cut their staff by 25% and 22%, respectively. Only a handful of companies like Lululemon, Nike, T.J. Maxx and Costco have raised their employee headcounts.”
Not only does this make the shopping experience less enjoyable for everyone, it’s making it more time consuming, both for shoppers and employees alike. And if there is anything that overworked Americans lack these days it’s time.
According to OECD stats, U.S. employees work an average of 1,791 hours per year versus an OECD country average of 1,716. This comes out to be 442 more hours per year than German workers, 294 more hours per year than United Kingdom workers, 301 more hours per year than French workers, and 184 more hours per year than Japanese workers. To top it off, the United States is the only country in the world where corporations are not required by law to give their employees vacation time.
Needless to say, the average American worker cannot afford to waste precious time and nerves shopping under such unprecedented conditions. Truly, the future of shopping, at least in America, will no longer occur inside of shopping malls, boutiques, and business districts, but from the comfort, safety and anonymity of one’s own home. That’s a sad testimony to the state of capitalist affairs in the United States, and the byproduct of disastrous liberal policies that seeks to punish law enforcement while rewarding the mob.
THE JOYS OF MULTICULTURALISM
This is now common place in london and other UK cities
black gangs given carte blanche to commit ” steaming ” crimes this is where 10 or 20 young blacks scatter in a store pick up anything of value and run out
To facilitate these crimes government closed 500 police stations last year and shut many over night when most crime occurs
they even people traffic in gangs to perpetuate this
WE now have a situation where eastern european gangs are now challenging the black gangs in a proposed turf war
remember if governments did not want this it would not be happening
No mention of the new laws that allow it all, or the fact that Blacks think they own the Universe
The demonic simian apes want their “gibsmuhdat” and “raparatchuns”. Our federal and state Jew controlled governments are not acting fast enough to provide those things. So, niggers and their lack of impulse control (it’s like watching chimps in the wild) will just take it. It’s planet of the apes in the beginning stages.
Well so many employees are treated like shit in the US all this is hardly surprising.
In contrast the TV programmes and sitcoms….American TV increasingly features celebrities driving around in expensive cars.It is an unreal world and most of the rich people are crypto jews.. That black billionaire who spoke up is getting poorer….the celebrity jewish media constantly has reports designed to cast him a bad light.
A sensible person would avoid drawing attention to themselves.
I wonder ’bout their ‘skintone’ though..
Just watch ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ (1972) to see what’s coming next.
These young hooded thieves dressed in black, the prodigy of dead-beat baby-makers and baby-mommas, are courtesy of liberal politics that offered unwed mothers abundant health care, housing, food stamps and even cell phones. At least four generations of baby mommas have perpetuated a burgeoning population of undisciplined feral youth that not only is adversely affecting retail theft, retail jobs and commercial real estate – but burdening the school system, police, fire, and eventually prison systems….all paid additionally be the law-abiding tax-payers. And now the US and UK are stuck. Because these people riot and steal in the best of times, JUST IMAGING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE GOVT RUNS OUT OF MONEY TO PAY FOR THEIR FREE-BEES ??
The 1964 movie ‘Zulu’ is an excellent training film of the white British minority soldiers battling & winning against the African Zulu majority.
The blacks set an excellent example of how the English especially should have overun and taken back their own parliament years ago.
Instead, one supposes we will have to listen to all the armchair warriors whining on for years to come over the loss of their country.
Don’t worry about the blacks – they are to be part of the new island slave plantation – when you’re all gone! 🏴🦴
Tell the fucking truth ; it’s NIGGERS LOOTING, period.
Fucking goddamn scum.
My God, the Jews have really messed up this country.
Where’s the “diversity?” I just see a lot of untamed black people.
Last time the film Zulu was mentioned at TTS, a Zulu wrote in saying his people would never sacrifice themselves like that
I know that technically it is “only” theft those subhuman simian Orcs are perpetrating, but it is to such a shocking, destructive level that those types of incidents have to be considered as crimes of violence. They literally have hordes of beasts looting and pillaging. They SHOULD be gunned down on the sidewalks and in the streets, their get-away vehicles targeted and destroyed. An even simpler solution would be to snatch just a couple of them on their way out, beat the ever living piss out of them, and have them hanged along the avenue right in front of the stores. And broadcast it city-wide and nation-wide.
How about another joke, Murray? What do you get when you allow hordes of violent street simians to get away with invasions and pillaging? You get what you f*cking deserve.
I went through the post-disaster chaos in New Orleans when we were actually better off when “official” law enforcement collapsed. Good citizens took matters into our own hands and were able to properly administer justice on the spot when criminal degenerates were dumb enough to attempt to egregiously violate the law.
Bottom line is severe punishment for anyone who does the rational thing and kills the killers.
Bred by aliens to work in mines with just enough intelligence for the job. I believe it. Soulless beasts.
Anyone noticed the spade eyeballing you every time you go out now?
Pool balls in a sock 😉
Liverpool, in Northern England, has some Black genes from the 1700s when it was a big port for slavery, and its people still have Black characteristics–the Liverpool (football) fans enter a shop en masse and take all they want; a joke was that they always steal your wheels (probably the whole car if they were more Black), and they ceaselessly complain that gov. does not give them enough, even if they contribute nothing. A few Black genes do this to you even after 250 years. I am agreeing with another Lerch comment here