The big cities of America were once as beacons of prosperity, culture and trade. But today, many of Hen-Hen, who are run by progressive, soft-on-crime leadership-a stunning financial prize for policy that places criminals for communities.
It is not only about feeling unsafe when you walk to dinner or shop in the city center. Crime has a balance. In poorly guided cities, that balance is bleeding red ink during the day.
The Retail Exodus
Let’s start with the retail trade. According to the National Retail Federation, American retailers lost $ 112 billion in 2022 due to theft, an increase of $ 94 billion the year before. In a recent study by the NRF, Retailers even reported an increase of 93% of the average number of shoplift incidents per year in 2023 versus 2019 and an increase of 90% in dollar loss as a result of shoplifting in the same period.
Too many of the American cities pay a stunning financial prize for policy that places criminals for communities. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
That is not just a rounding error – that is the size of GDP of a medium country wiped out because stores cannot keep merchandise on the shelves.
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Big-box retailers are not standing still. Goal alone projected $ 500 million in extra losses this year as a result of organized retail crime, much of it concentrated in hotspots with blue cities such as San Francisco, Portland and New York. Walgreens has closed dozens of stores in San Francisco. Nordstrom withdrew from the center.
These are not “mother and pop” stores without resources. These are companies that decide billion dollars that it is better to withdraw than to keep bleeding. It seems insane that so many of these stores have to lock up a lot of the merchandise in these cities, so that people do not plunder, knowing that they will never be arrested.
What follows the theft is a double hit: jobs disappear, and that also applies to the sales tax. In San Francisco, commercial vacancies are now no less than 34.8% in the center. Empty shopping fronts mean lost wage lists, lost foot traffic and falling city budgets.
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When the leadership achieves unbridled shoplifting, the real victim is not the company – it is the local community that loses its economic motorcycle.
High-end real estate values
Crime does not stop at the register. It seeps into neighborhoods and undermines the greatest financial asset that most Americans have: their houses. In Chicago, blocks that are plagued by violent crime and drug trafficking see a higher end condo and home values sinking. Lower real estate values are equal to lower real estate tax, which means less financing for schools, parks and infrastructure.
The price of violence and tourism
In New York it costs $ 925 a day – or more than $ 337,000 a year – to lock a single person. But instead of tackling the rustic causes of crime, city leaders continue to pump money into a cycle of arrest, release and repetition. And the costs of overtime for the NYPD spirits as officers try to do more with less, while politicians are abandoning their ability to maintain the law.
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Tourists are not stupid. If you do not feel safe in Times Square of Union Square, you will take your holiday collars elsewhere. Conventions are free of cities with reputation for lawlessness. That means lost hotel taxes, lost restaurant income and lost brand value for cities that have lasted decades to build their reputation.
It is expected that about 2 million fewer visitors from other countries will make the trip to New York City this year, which could cost the Big Apple $ 4 billion in foreign tourist dollars before 2025.
Especially for New York City, the bet is huge. And if individuals such as Zohran Mamdani – who has already argued for reducing police budgets – get their way, the costs will only grow. The enforcement of the country’s enforcement in the largest city in the country would mean a higher crime, lower investments and billions from the budget. It is a recipe for financial disaster.
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The Bottom Line
The costs of crime are not just what is stolen from a shopping shelf. It is measured in lost jobs, lower real estate values, higher taxes, ballooning public health costs and affected reputations. Poor leadership in blue cities ever changes America’s-large urban centers into warning stories about what happens when you stop maintaining the law.
If local leaders do not give a priority to public safety, they should not be surprised when companies, families and capital run away. Because ultimately the real crime is not only on the street – it is in the budgets of poorly guided blue cities, where the costs of chaos are measured in billions.
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