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If people think grocery stores existing within walking distance of their homes will lower their home values, due to some rise in shoplifting in the news implying crime in their area, then the war for any sensible policy decisions is lost.

That's like ten carts before a horse or some brawndo has what plants crave shit. I can walk to the grocery store where I live -- my house is worth more because it has decent access to amenities.

IIRC there is a push in some areas to switch to e-bikes; while they carry less, you also don’t need a CDL to ride a bicycle and there is a chronic shortage of CDL drivers.

There's no shortage of anything except training and wages/benefits. At some point, companies are going to have to bite the bullet and start training their own employees. The horror!

There is a legitimate lack, partially because the federal guidelines for holding a CDL rule out anyone who uses marijuana.

I somehow doubt that there is truly a lack of people willing to train to obtain a CDL who also don't use marijuana. Hell, I don't use marijuana and I'd gladly do it if I needed a job.

We know at the very least that marijuana requirements are taking out people who already have CDLs. https://www.marijuanamoment.net/tens-of-thousands-of-trucker...

> Data from DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) shows that, since 2020, more than 100,000 truckers tested positive for cannabis, as Transport Topics first reported. Marijuana was by far the most common banned substance to come up in the drug screenings.

> Overall, there have been approximately 166,000 people who tested positive for some prohibited substance since 2020, according to a report that FMCSA’s Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse published last week. There is an option for those truckers to enter a “return-to-work” process that would require another drug test; however, the data shows that a large fraction of people are not taking the opportunity. About 91,000 of those 166,000 truckers who didn’t pass the drug screening have not enrolled in the process yet.

> This would be problematic from an economic standpoint in any industry, but it’s especially troubling in the transportation sector, which has been facing a significant labor shortage.

Trucking is not the best industry to be in and there are a lot of problems, but dismissing people who smoke weed, at all, is adding fuel to the fire.

> (People won't like the crime that comes with it).

Does crime come with it? I certainly wouldn't expect that.

People don't shoplift at their neighbors homes. They shoplift at grocery stores and whatever.

Crime happens at places of commerce. That's just... how it works. Places of commerce have both goods to steal (especially useful black-market goods, like Tide Detergent) and cash-registers to steal from. I'm not saying like "murders" or whatever, but when a neighborhood has +100 police reports in a month, the Real Estate agents notice that and home values drop.

That's just... how it works. Its not necessarily about "which crimes are actually dangerous" or whatever, people just pay attention to crime heatmaps and don't really look into the details.

You stick a store designed to sell to homes, that store _will_ have homegoods, including Tide Detergent, in stock. That Tide _will_ be stolen, its just so easy to steal, easy to sell in the black market. That stolen good will be reported on police reports (so that the store can get back its insurance, or write it off or whatever they plan to do accounting wise). That police report will drop nearby home values.

Can you quote actual statistics, not merely sensationalizing articles, demonstrating an increase in shoplifting? As far as I've seen there is no evidence to back up this common assertion. The narrative that is floating around is doing a lot of work to convince people it's true but where are the facts?

No.

Empirically, myself and my sister have witnessed shoplifters personally in recent months. I know this is anecdotal data, but anecdotes (especially personal ones) are enough for myself. At least in my area, it seems like shoplifters _are_ on the rise.

I don't need to prove it to other people on the internet. My own eyes with my own life is enough proof for me. If that's not enough for you, whatever. Seeing news reports that others are seeing similar rises matches my "gut check".

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Now people stealing food from grocery stores is... you know... the lowest level of shoplifting. These people aren't stealing like, luxury goods. They're clearly just trying to survive. Its not like a criminal gang or organized crime that'd be deeply rooted and/or difficult to deal with.

IMO, its weird that people would rather shoplift than to apply and/or use a WIC card (food stamps). So its a conundrum for another day in any case, its a crime (albeit relatively victimless. Sure sucks for the staff and the grocery store but I've seen worse...). But its still speaks poorly for neighborhoods and makes people feel less safe. So yeah, it needs to stop. But I can 100% believe that shoplifting is on the rise today. Anecdotally at least.

There's other low-level crimes, like obviously not-paying for the subway, that I think is on the rise by my eyes as well. These also make people feel unsafe and/or unappreciated (tax dollars wasted, etc. etc.) and is bad for our neighborhoods.

I do know that statistically speaking, the personal savings rate of people has declined, wages haven't kept with inflation, etc. etc. So these actions make sense in the greater economic situation IMO.

I don't necessarily want a police crackdown to throw all these people in jail. But we do need to do something, maybe make WIC cards easier to apply for (at every grocery store for example), or stuff like that. We literally have a food-stamps program, why aren't people using it? Why are they shoplifting instead?

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If I cared, I probably would start by interviewing / personally talking to cashiers at my local grocery store before I trusted online articles anyway. And I'd suggest you do the same if you cared about this issue. The internet is just not as good a source of information as the front-line workers here.

Every grocery store clerk has a feel. Talk with them next time you visit the store, don't be a political asshat about it but it wouldn't take more than 1 or 2 minutes to ask them if they've noticed more shoplifters. Obviously don't eat up all their time either (they're on the job after all). With luck, you might see a manager watching all the clerks who'd have more freetime to talk about shoplifters too.

Don't you think police would be jumping at the chance to show hard stats that your claims are true if they measured them? Why would it be so hard to find those things if police could use it to justify their policies and crackdowns?

I don't need to look up the stats. I already believe in them.

And I frankly don't care to convince you of the fact. I'm not sure if anything you'd say could beat out my personal methodology on this particular question. I actually wave / say hi / talk to the grocery store clerks (and their managers) on a regular basis, so I've got people I trust who can tell me about rising (or not) shoplifting. I really don't need the internet to tell me this.

I literally can just ask the manager (and I recognize him by face since we talk so often) at the store next time I see them. I'm not sure if you'd care on their response or not, but... I'd trust him more than anything you'd say or research. No offense to you personally, but I have my methods to gathering information that I trust more.

There's much, much simpler, and direct, ways of getting information than surfing online for a database... or engaging on internet debates over.

I would care about their response, I just wouldn't consider any single source to be the operational "truth". I know how limited personal perspectives can be and how skewed perceptions can get when fear is one of the emotions in the mix. I'd take everything everyone says and judge based on their likelihood to react to incomplete data based on emotions, what's in it for them to spread certain narratives, and what kinds of hard evidence they can summon to back up their claims. None of these are dealbreakers, all of them fit into the wider picture.

infra is not going to change in the US. Too much individual ownership at stake.

For example I care about the environment but not enough to throw away a one million dollar suburban house for it.

Basically to fix this problem is essentially to cause current suburban housing to depreciate in value until the property has become essentially worthless which is against much of the populations self interest as many people own homes. Either way, this kind of thing has sort of already happened in Japan.

That being said in CA there are measures to combat this problem. ADUs and SB-9 to increase density, but adoption has not yet been that wide spread.

>>>Either way, this kind of thing has sort of already happened in Japan.

Can you explain?

In japan most physical houses are worth more than the property they stand on. That's why real estate prices in japan constantly depreciate.

The only place where this isn't true are big urban cities like tokyo near really good locations.

See source: https://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/popular-myt...

Nobody really talks about why there's this dichotomy between Japan in and the US. The reasoning is multifaceted. One of these things is infrastructure. Japan cities have extremely good infrastructure and are super clean. Living in Tokyo is close to living in a futuristic utopian cyberpunk society. So people know that the urban way of life is 100x better.

The Western US is centered around suburban life where everyone drives cars. Property is spread out and not much is invested in cities on the west coast. People don't see the value of city life as much. The east side of the US is more hybridized where rural and city properties are valued for different reasons.

Much of this dichotomy between countries is driven by lack of land in Japan and a lowering population. However this just pushes japan ahead of the curve. As energy becomes more and more expensive all economies will inevitably shift to becoming more like japan where suburban properties become more and more worthless.