genderkills wasn’t talking about min wage workers tho? like she literally said stealing from the rich. how did you get min wage workers out of that.

ari-nemera:

Hey! I don’t want to start a fight or anything, and I’ve been doing my research  on this topic for quite a while, so let me explain more clearly.

She’s right, calling her dumbass was out of line, but when I said that claiming ‘lifting hurts capitalism’ is an abstract point of view I meant this;

lifting does multiple things, most, yes, to the lower class. This is because at the ground level, businesses employ minimum-wage employees to work their stores. Stores, of course, are where lifting happens.

minimum-wage employees, by their wage alone, are classified as lower-class, because until we raise our minimum wage, $8.00 an hour isn’t enough to even afford a one bedroom apartment. (sad and shitty truth)

When lifting happens, a chain of events happen in that store. First, the employee on duty, or the employee who ‘watches’ a designated part of the store, is brought in front of their manager and lectured for not being responsible. This doesn’t sound too bad, but afterwards, the employee gets their hours cut, or has their job re-assigned because they are no longer seen as trustworthy individuals.

Let me emphasize that this is being let off easy.

No, their wages can’t be cut, that’s illegal, and is often a mis-informed argument against lifting, but the thing that actually happens to the employee in ‘trouble’ is far worse.

They literally get fired from their job.

If lifting continues to happen, it of course, climbs the chain of command in that store. Managers can be re-assigned, more employees might come under superstition. (the company begins to assume that the employees are lifting, not some kid trying to ‘kill capitalism’), and of course, even managers can get fired. if firing their employees doesn’t solve the problem.

This is only the FIRST step in a long list of damages this does to the lower class. People who lift are actually risking the jobs of any number of employees in their store, and we ALL know how tough the job market is right now.  no money = no food, no home + the permanent dint on their hiring record because future businesses will know they got fired for ‘letting kids steal’.

Top that off, if enough retail (aka, the shit lifters steal) goes missing, the corporations you all hate don’t hear a thing about it. That’s because businesses are designed to be self-running, so CEOs don’t feel a dint in their pocket. And they have literally worked lifting into how they run their stores. (I took a class on business management. Lifting is statistically added into how they calculate a profit)

Something gets lifted? well, we need to make that money back somehow!

So they raise the prices of the rest of that item in the store. Maybe not even that item! If enough random stuff gets lifted, and it’s continuous, they will raise the prices of everything in the store.

No big deal for a lifter, but let’s take another look at that poor lower class I was talking about earlier.

Suddenly, instead of $3.25 a gallon, milk is $4.00! Doesn’t seem like a high price raise right? As someone who’s grown up poor, let me tell you..

when your entire life, including your ability to pay bills, is based off of a strictly-balanced budget with little wiggle-room, suddenly having everything in a store raise by .50 cents is HORRIBLE.

I lived off ramen and hand-me down clothes. I was so used to having our electric bill not payed that when the electricity went out no one even cared. If we did have milk in the house, let me repeat, if we even could afford milk, it was against house rules to drink it, and it was used solely for meals.

Lifting ruins poor people’s ability to function in our still-failing economy.

So yes, lifting is ‘stealing’, but it doesn’t steal from the rich. The rich don’t give two shits about lifting. They have rules put in place to avoid it from ever putting a dent in their wallet.

I hope that explains what I meant more clearly! I hope it’s easier now for you to see why lifting is actually harmful to lower-class people trying to survive in a failing economy.

It’s not worth it if it makes poor people lose their jobs, and the ability to afford a basic living. 😦  No one deserves that, and capitalism isn’t going to change because of it. Lifting just makes sure less money goes to the poor, so the rich can keep more of it for themselves. See how it’s the opposite of Robin Hood? The poor lose money, while the rich keep it.