Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Issue 480 Of Thieves and Store Prices December 10, 2014


Did you know that thieves have a perverse effect on the prices we pay at stores?  Yes it is true.  They cause store prices to rise.  Allow me to explain.

The inverse relationship:  What happens is this, a thief steals a good and it becomes theirs illegally.  But this is not the end of the trouble they have caused.  As such, the store owner has to somehow make up for that loss.  So what is a store owner to do in an event like this where they have to recover that items value monetarily?  Well they can do any one of a combination of three things:

1) Take a pay cut and make it an acceptable loss.  This means the store owner lost money on their own.

2) Cut the wages of their workers.  This is typically a last resort, but a viable and sometimes used option if thievery is so bad that they cannot make up for the losses they are receiving.  As such, thieves are robbing the workers too.

3) Then there is raising store prices to recover the costs.  This is typically the second to last option, but unfortunately used to divvy up the cost burden on the people who buy goods.  So in this sense the thief is now making the goods you wish to buy more unaffordable for the rest of us and therefore stealing from all the customers as well.

So this is it, the thief not only steals from a store owner, but is stealing from the workers and from you and me as well.


Conclusion:  So thieves have a bigger effect on our own pockets as much as they do on the owners who own their businesses.  So it is a sad relationship, which unfortunately causes blame for higher prices and lower wages on the owner when it is not in totality their fault.  

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