The circle of life. Stores fail for complex reasons → retailer quietly posts accurate analysis of its own mistakes → retailer loudly posts press release blaming shoplifters and gangs → media likes …
You don’t understand what it’s like for them. They don’t like sacking people for bonuses but they just can’t come up with any other ways to increase profit. What are they supposed to do? Get creative? Build a strong respectful work culture? Not take a bonus? You see. It’s not as easy as you think. Timmy can miss out on his toy train this Christmas. Besides, it’s just business
I’ll give Target a bit of lee at here because they were only there first to admit they were wrong, they also shared a bunch of data about how their shrink calculation methodology, which much of the retail sector shares, is flawed.
I have worked for target. Their logistics methodology is incredibly on point. They are highly invested in getting things right, if no other reason, for the sake of their own profitability.So as there are being open, they have some credibility here, I would say, especially given that others here are so closed. This interest certainly serves their profit motive as much as it services our our motive. 
There is, at least, for now, no reason to distress them.
Boing boing .net has been a reputable site for years. I think it started as a blog for author and journalist Cory Doctorow, but has become a news site of its own. The recent term enshittification was coined by Doctorow.
This turning out to be true is unsurprising, but if it were, follow it to its logical conclusion and you would see large retailers lobbying the government to increase wages. Like, we live in a fucking police state, the problem is not that we're suddenly an outlaw country, the problem is that people don't make enough money or have enough safety nets to live. It's the same with all of the "Americans feel bad about the economy even though the dow is up, why?" Well, because we can't afford housing and groceries. Simple fucking problem.
I was looking at Bidens approval rating compared to other presidents on 538 and it's crazy seeing the last time this really was so bad, aside from Trump, was the Great Depression...which says alot about the disconnect today spouting Dow successes but normal people struggling to stay afloat.
Those stock indexes only show how the top corporations are doing. A company gets removed from the index if it performs poorly and is replaced by another company that has increasing stock price. The markets as it is displayed in media only show how corporations are doing. So basically the ruling class is selling economic performance to everyone else to keep people in line and their heads securely on their bodies.
Don't worry, people will completely ignore the retraction and continue to blame their fellow poor people (just not themselves) for the outrageous behavior of our corporations.
Kind of like how any game developer who says that piracy is the reason that they failed financially, even though some of the greatest games of all time are the ones that get pirated the most.
They are talking about organized retail theft. Individuals stealing still could make up a large amount of loss. Article doesn't seem clear to me on that point.
That type of knee jerk conjecture is really weak. The data collected on shrinkage, as noted in the linked Reuter's article, is noisy. You can't differentiate lose due to theft or shipping mistakes or cliericsl error.
More importantly, and not mentioned directly in the boingboing article, was the cited number of rising organized theft was based upon an analyst from a security firm. The report was created in partnership with that firm. With the recent redaction, there is no mention of that firm.