Trumpenomics
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/12/14/inflation-drives-holiday-shopping/
Higher costs push holiday shoppers toward socks, coffee and diapers
Inflation and economic jitters have many Americans rethinking their wish lists. “What I want for Christmas is for someone to buy me toilet paper and dish soap." -
Do you think Finley would prefer Espresso or French Toast?
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https://www.foodandwine.com/self-checkout-theft-rates-increase-lendingtree-report-2025-11869915
https://www.lendingtree.com/debt-consolidation/checkout-theft-survey/
Twenty-seven percent of users now admit to purposefully not scanning items, up from 15% just two years ago, according to a new survey from LendingTree released as the holiday shopping season peaks. The jump comes as grocery costs continue to climb and economic pressure on lower-income households grows.
Among those who admitted to stealing, 47% cited "unaffordable essentials" as their primary reason, while 39% said prices felt "unfair or too high." ...
I am surprised that theft at the self-checkout lines is now so pervasive.
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The logistics are not that simple at my local HEB and presumably most places. You can't just put an unscanned thing in the bagging area, because there's a scale there expecting exact weights for exact items that you scan. You'd have to put the unscanned item in your cart directly, without being seen by the watcher person. But there it would sit until you've completed your checkout, and they'd have questions.
There are more advanced versions I've heard about where a person might scan a cheap item of a certain weight, then put a more expensive item of the same weight in the bagging area. Then scan the cheap item again and put it in the bagging area. That would be more difficult for the watcher to notice, and would leave no trace through the rest of the checkout process.
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I think easy cheating is dropping the leading ‘9’ from organic foods (or selecting the non-organic option from the menu) since you can feign ignorance if caught.
One time I accidentally didn’t take out the item from the bottom of my cart (I think it was paper towels), scanned everything else, put the bags in my cart, and headed out. Then I noticed it and went back to scan the big item in a separate transaction. That would have been another possibility with plausible deniability. You could theoretically steal some real $ that way, a big fat organic turkey for example.
