People buy stocks with the expectation that the value will increase over time. Which it does. As long as the company remains profitable. Which gives company leadership an incentive to raise prices and lower overhead as much as possible.

@James

Oh, this should be fun. Tell me, do you believe that when Walmart posts their quarterly earnings (including all of their reported losses due to the theft risk factor, like replacing products, legal fees, and security costs) their accountants are “forgetting macroeconomics”? Or are they just intentionally deceiving investors to try to downplay their costs due to theft? If so, why would they do something that is both illegal and not in their best interest?

You’re sort of right.

Rising prices are definitely making people desperate, and many of them are resorting to shoplifting. Some are stealing basic necessities (food, diapers, etc), some are stealing luxury products (TVs, car parts) and reselling them, and some are just stealing lottery tickets hoping that they’ll win big and won’t have to worry about money anymore.

However, prices aren’t going up because of theft. They’re going up because companies exist to make money and will raise their prices as high as they can.

Let’s use Walmart as an example. Their total reported loss due to shoplifting accounted for less than 1% of their total revenue. If Walmart was only raising prices because of theft? Then they would only have to raise prices by 1% to completely make up for it.

Groceries aren’t expensive because the single mom stole some formula. Groceries are expensive because a shareholder wants a new yacht.

Those tickets are tracked every step of the way. The controls and security features of those cards guarantee that you will never get away with stealing them!!!