I saw on the news Walmart may have to shut down some stores and also increase prices just because of the massive shoplifting. This is organized retail theft. Other stores such as Target are also affected. I actually caught the figure for target. They've lost $400 million in 2022 from shoplifting. Of course Walmart is higher than that although I don't know the amount.
Don't buy into what is essentially corporate propaganda. Walmart's "theft" problem is their self-checkout, which they intentionally do not maintain in order to report "theft," which they will then use as justification to start closing stores and cutting employees. The profits they made during the pandemic were unsustainable, but their accounting departments attributed it to an increased online/pickup experience despite the fact that in-person shopping was illegal in much of the country, and reason that by expanding online, they can attain those profits again. Target and Best Buy are doing the same, purposefully under-staffing and under-stocking stores to drive more online business. All major national retail chains are undergoing major restructuring to try and maintain Covid-levels of profitability. It's crap and a lie. Best Buy's CEO, my old boss, even went so far as to actively discourage customers from coming into to stores on the Today show this time last year, saying that employees feared for their safety because of theft while never mentioning that she had completely eliminated the loss prevention arm of the company.
To show just how "serious" Walmart takes its self checkout (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/walmart-shoplifting-lawsuit.html):
And the organized gangs of thieves are only encouraged by PUBLIC corporate statements that employees who try to stop them will be fired.
If you're using a laptop or PC you can bypass any paywall by right-clicking on the page> left click 'inspect'> left click the 'options' icon in the top right> scroll to the bottom of the options menu and left click 'disable java script'> then refresh the page and close the 'inspect page'...
The right wing propaganda outlets are smart enough to not use paywalls. It's too bad that actual journalists keep shooting themselves in the foot.