I found this part of Amy Walter’s remarks at Cook Political Report on the complexity of “bouncing back” from the COVID-19 pandemic interesting:
Cities across the country have seen a rise in so-called “smash and grab†robberies of retail stores, incentivized in part by a pandemic-boosted online marketplace where organized criminals can sell the stolen goods.
I would love to see that quantified. One way of doing so would be to see if the number of offerings on various platforms of the preferred booty from these incidents of “flash mob looting” had risen. I’m actually skeptical that it’s Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, etc.’s fault. Other potential factors might be growing sense of entitlement, bad law enforcement (in the broadest sense), and the ease of organizing such “flash mobs”.
On her larger subject, my own opinion is that the very notion of “bouncing back” from COVID-19 is based on flawed assumptions. You don’t “bounce back” from something that has become endemic. You adapt to it.
In our general area it is all make up and perfume they are stealing. Very highly focused. If this was general bad behavior like entitlement then I would expect the theft to be less focused. There appears to be a very good ROI on a few products as those are what is being stolen.
Steve
In CA the smash and grab is occurring in high end stores carrying high end stuff. Literally millions of dollars has been ripped off with little to no consequences to the perpetrators. A recent discussion about the causes pinned it on recent legislation that turned felony shoplifting into a misdemeanor, coupled with no bail upon release. Some say, so goes CA goes the rest of the nation.