Basically, everything is wrong with what the libs are claiming.Originally Posted by Dan Druff
First of all, they act like the retail closures are isolated to communities of color in California, however:
https://www.dailylocal.com/2023/12/3...-11-in-pa/amp/
Rite-Aids, for one example, are dropping like flies. At the end of December, they announced they were closing 53 stores...which includes 11 in Pennsylvania; that's in addition to the stores they already closed last year. Walgreens has also had some number of closures around me, but I don't feel like looking up any recent announcements just for the sake of making a post. What I can say is, within five miles in any given direction of me, I think that three or four Walgreens/Rite-Aids have closed.
I would say one of their first problems is market over saturation; at least, that's what it seems like to me. Two of the Rite-Aid closures (within the last year) are functionally on the same road, though in different boroughs, but then there are also multiple Rite-Aids that have remained open between those two boroughs. Walgreens also owns/operates a similar chain in England called, Boots, and announced the closure of 200 of those last year.
In order for liberals to even have a leg to stand on, even ignoring the obvious shoplifting issues completely, Rite-Aid/CVS/Walgreens would have to be specifically targeting those sorts of communities for closures, but many of the closures that have taken place are in areas that couldn't be less demographically similar.
However, we also have to look at the crime issue. I could understand the youngest liberals not being able to make the connection here, even though it's a matter of simple cause and effect, but the crime issues are why the stores are not profitable. If there is a ton of retail theft/loss going on in a location, then that location will become less profitable. If you have to put products behind lock and key that you wouldn't have to in other areas, (some of their expensive fragrances, for example, are typically behind lock and key in my experience---regardless where you go) then that adds to cost and makes the stores less profitable. In addition to the cost of installation as well as the theft thwarting fixtures themselves, you also have employee time costs when they have to go unlock the shit in order for people to buy stuff---so now customers either deal with longer wait times or you need to have more employees---not to mention having to hire employees as security when you'd otherwise not have to do that.
Just compare the share prices of corporations such as Walgreens Boots Alliance and CVS to the DOW for the last year and you'll see that things haven't been going great.
In addition to these issues and the self-competing that was always stupid to begin with (At one time, we had a Walgreens nearby that was across the street from...another Walgreens), there are also now mail order pharmacies, so the necessity for physical pharmacy locations has been somewhat reduced by those.
I just can't fathom how stupid people are required to pretend to be; I refuse to accept that people actually are this stupid---we're talking about impossible levels of stupidity. Loss/Theft should represent about 1-1.5% of sales as a retail standard; there's always going to be some loss, some unaccounted for damage and some level of theft...Loss/Theft is commonly known as, "Shrink Rate," these days, but in the back, you'll just have a posting that refers to loss/theft and the guesstimate of how much of that you're looking at on the year.
Some people are also acting like these inner city closings exist in a total vacuum and the corporations aren't trying to reduce their ridiculously oversized footprint elsewhere; nothing could be further from the truth! One of the Rite-Aids around me that closed is on something of a business-heavy road that already had another Rite-Aid in a plaza about a half mile down from it; that can (rarely) make sense, but both of these locations were absolutely serving the same residential area.
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