Shoplifters Cite Inflation, Economy As Excuses for Stealing

My parents grew up during the Depression. My grandparents raised their families mostly during those bleak years. Many people in the small eastern Iowa community they lived in suffered from hard times. Some people failed to make mortgage payments and lost their homes. Some left the area looking for greener pastures, some moved in with relatives.

My mother used to talk about those years a lot. Dad, not so much; his taciturn nature didn't lend itself to a lot of reminiscing. Growing up on a farm, at least Mom and her parents and siblings always had plenty to eat, and maybe there were some nostalgia goggles in place, but my mother always insisted on one thing: People didn't steal. An act of theft would get you ostracized, and one can't live in a small community like that.

But some people are claiming inflation and the bad economy as justification for theft.

Needless to say, times were a lot harder then than they are now, and yet we see people claiming inflation and the bad economy as justification for theft.
Nearly one-quarter of Americans – about 23% – admitted to stealing from stores within the past year, according to the survey, which polled 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 78.
Of those who confessed to shoplifting, about 90% blamed it on high inflation and the state of the economy. More than one-third said they rely on stealing because "prices have become otherwise unaffordable," while 30% said it helps make ends meet. Another 27% said they stole something in order to "save a few bucks."

In a word — well, two words — horse squeeze.

It's hard to believe that one-fourth of Americans are justifying theft for any reason other than starvation, but that may well be where we are. And the reasons here are, to put it mildly, weak — especially the two cited. Stealing to "make ends meet?" to "save a few bucks?" That has nothing to do with inflation or the economy; that's just stealing. There is no indication that anyone was stealing to fend off starvation. People who are stealing because of starvation don't organize flash mobs to loot high-end retail outlets or steal from people in a restaurant while running up a tab in the hundreds of dollars.

Retailers Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands to Combat Retail Theft Rings

Many people — honest people — simply won't buy these arguments. Stealing — an act of theft, the taking of another citizen's property by stealth or by force, is not acceptable under any circumstances, much less to "save a few bucks." And no need, no struggles with rising prices, no economic hardship justifies physically attacking a clerk when that clerk remonstrates with a thief.

Almost every community has resources to help people who are in dire straits. Even our tiny Susitna Valley community has a thrift store and food bank. There are always places one can go in the event one needs to eat, not only community resources but the vast amounts of taxpayer dollars the various levels of government pour into things like the SNAP program. There is no justification for stealing.

Even crying poverty is no justification, and here's why: There is little, probably no, abject poverty in the United States. There is relative poverty, but that's not the same thing. "Poor" people in the United States live better than the middle class in most of the world; they live better than the overwhelming majority of people throughout human history. Poor Americans have cell phones, automobiles, cable or satellite television, microwave ovens, and internet access; they enjoy comforts undreamed of only a generation or two ago, and as far as food goes, the primary health issue facing poor Americans today is obesity.

None of these things justify stealing.

Back to my Depression-era grandparents: My grandmother was fond of pointing out that "...being honest is like being pregnant. You either are, or you aren't." Stealing, theft, is a dishonest act. None of the excuses in the linked article above cut it.