Religious Liberty Quiz

Phat writes: Percy writes: You definitely are not losing $3500/day to shoplifting. The audacity! For your information, I was shown the monthly figure which was over $115,000.00. Do the math. You seem to think im a blithering idiot.

I do not think you are a blithering idiot. I think precisely what I've said on earlier occasions, that you are unable to anchor what you believe in reality or to connect facts to conclusions, and so you fix randomly on things to believe without rhyme or reason and are an easy mark.

That $3500 figure you cited is consistent with that for the average grocery store, but for *total shrinkage* and definitely not for shoplifting all by itself. As a figure for shoplifting it is way too big.

$3500/day shrinkage would be 2-3% for a grocery store doing $150,000/day We do around $70,000.00 a day.

At $70,000/day your grocery store appears to be a small one, having about half the sales volume of the average grocery store ($150,000/day). You say your shrinkage is $150,000/month, which comes out to $3780/day (not $3500), and if that's true then your shrinkage (theft, perishables, etc.) percentage is 5.4%, which is enormous, entirely unlikely, unsustainable, unsurvivable.

And $3780/day of shoplifting just all by itself, which is what you're actually claiming, is absurd, because there would be at least 2% of so of shrinkage due to other causes, and adding them together results in a number that any grocery store is unlikely to survive.

Maybe you do work in a grocery store that doesn't fail despite experiencing impossible financials as well as being plagued by criminals who steal openly and massively without apparent fear of arrest or jail time, but I doubt it. It's much more likely the information you're providing is not accurate.

For it's second quarter Kroger's for the first time in its history reported problems with organized crime (see Crime Rings, Big Packs and ‘Mind-Boggling’ Reviews as Kroger Navigates Q2), but they estimate the impact as only a .4% decrease in their bottom line. What you're reporting at your store is massive by comparison. This is from What Is Supermarket Shrink?:

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A spring 2013 study by the University of Florida showed a 2.5 percent supermarket shrinkage rate, which was more than double than the 1.1 percent rate for all retailers.
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Shoplifting accounted for 36 percent of all theft-related shrinkage. While supermarkets do suffer from shoplifting, food products, especially those that are hot or cold, are often more difficult to conceal and steal than general merchandise. Cashiers account for 31 percent of theft and general employees another 25 percent. Vendor theft accounts for the remaining 8 percent of theft-related shrink.

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So that's yet another source making clear that what you're claiming for your store is outlandishly high not just for retailers in general, but even for the supermarket sector with its higher shrink rate than other retailing sectors.

So I'd be bonkers to believe your claims of working at a supermarket so far out of the norm. It's much more likely that, consistent with your recent history, you're just way out of touch with reality. You've described your health issues, and we all feel for you, but that doesn't mean we can sit back and provide assent to whatever you say. For the present I'd like to see you take things down a notch and put a bit more emphasis on listening and little less on asserting because you're unable to actually figure anything out and so are reduced to just baldly and baselessly asserting things, which is never a good idea.

socialist ringo writes: Why should people care about your livelihood when it's already so much better than their own? Because that's how America works.

You replied to me, but you've now gone back to a message from six days ago from Ringo without giving anyone a hint which message it was (for the record, Message 53).

Anyway, looking at this now, even you must realize that you were making no sense. It shouldn't need to be explained.

We don't strive for everyone to be making the same wage.

Where in the world did Ringo say anything like that? Certainly not in what you quoted, and not in the message you quoted from either. If that's what he actually believes and he said it somewhere then before rebutting it you have to quote it. Right now your comment looks out of the blue.

Our wage has actually dropped in purchasing power over the past twenty years. The fact that I make more than you is irrelevant. I don't complain that Percy or nwr or Tangle make more than I do. Your Socialism is showing again!

This, too, is out of the blue. And by the way, unless you have a negative salary, you make more than me.

Which by the way leads us on yet another rabbit trail: Saule Omarova

Yes, you're veering wildly off-topic.

Is anyone aware of her plans to nationalize the currency and essentially eliminate private banking? Don't get me started on what a threat that is.

Good God, where do you get this garbage? Our currency is already nationalized and has been for over a hundred and fifty years. All nationalization of the currency means is that the government mints the currency. In almost all nations of the world today it is the government that mints the currency. Seriously, who scared you with this bit of misinformation? What's next? "Omigod, the goverment's gonna nationalize Congress!"

Omarova's "reform proposal and thought experiment" for the Federal Reserve to provide banking account services so that no citizen is unbanked is a radical idea that she put out there for discussion. She was highlighting the plight of those disadvantaged by lack of access to banking services, not advocating a policy position. You can stop panicking now.

Stop trusting what the Republicans say the Democrats said and vice versa. Listen to what people actually did say.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Clarify one sentence.

Percy writes: Stop trusting what the Republicans say the Democrats said and vice versa. Listen to what people actually did say.

Stop trusting what the Apologists say the Bible said and vice versa. Read what it actually did say.

Throw your god and the gods of the Carny Barkers away.

Here's a link to Omarova's article about banking: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy. At 60 pages or so it's long. Here's the first paragraph:

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This Article is both a reform proposal and a thought experiment. It is an attempt to come to terms with powerful forces reshaping today’s finance: technological disruption, macroeconomic imbalances, and political demands for broader access to financial services. These forces are redefining how we use and understand money, payments, investments—and what we expect from banks, central banks, and lawmakers entrusted with our collective wellbeing. From a public policy perspective, this ongoing transformation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it renders familiar tools of monetary policy and financial regulation increasingly obsolete and ineffectual. On the other hand, it offers a unique opportunity to correct the inequities and inefficiencies built into the core structures of modern finance. In this sense, the current convergence of deep technological, economic, and political shifts creates a crucial opening for redesigning the financial system.

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Here's the first place where she alludes to the plight of the unbanked. It appears at the end of page 19:

quote:

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The Federal Reserve remained noticeably cautious in its CBDC efforts, despite the shifting political context. The U.S. government’s inept pandemic response has exposed the intimate connection between the CBDC idea and the practical need for publicly provided and universally available deposit services. Federal financial aid, meant to help individuals and households to weather the COVID-19 crisis, was unacceptably slow to reach the most vulnerable segments of the population without access to regular banking services. Millions of Americans, especially in poor and minority populated communities, had to wait for a month or more to receive paper checks from the federal government. This “logistical” problem brought into sharp relief both the inexcusable lack of a fast retail payments system and the unacceptably high human cost of being “unbanked” in the United States.

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The CBDC acronym stands for Central Bank Digital Currency. As you can see, she's motivated by a desire to address the delays that plagued efforts at getting pandemic assistance to people without bank accounts, and so she later suggests that the Federal Reserve could provide free banking services.

You can now march forward into the future more accurately informed than previously.

You don't really believe the things you've said these past few months, do you? You do really care about other people, don't you? You do understand that Republican advocacy of self reliance is just an excuse for heartless callousness and disinterested unconcern, don't you? You do understand how unChristian the Republicans and most politicized Christians are, don't you (you appear to have become an example)? It is clear to you that there's nothing Christian about the things they want to do, isn't it?

You've been sounding as heartless as Faith, an endless font of evidence for the way many Christians just aren't very Christian. We could call them CINO's.

--Percy

Phat writes: We have no position on armed or not.

And yet you've mentioned it twice.

Phat writes: We just want the authority present to stop the evil that abounds.

Why not stop the evil at its source?

Phat writes: As the shoplifters become more brazen we fear for our security personally.

As I said before, the drugstore where I worked reduced their response to shoplifters:

1. to reduce the risk to the staff confronting them.
2. to reduce the backlash from charges of racism, etc.

Phat writes: socialist ringo writes: Why should people care about your livelihood when it's already so much better than their own? Because that's how America works.

It doesn't work for the thousands of homeless and hungry. It doesn't seem to work very well for you either, judging by your constant complaints.

Phat writes: We don't strive for everyone to be making the same wage.

I didn't suggest any such thing. I said that since you make more than many other people - including people doing the same job as you - you have less to complain about than they do.

Phat writes: Your Socialism is showing again!

If you had a clue what socialism is, I'd take that as a compliment.