The narrative that is being sold is that there’s mass theft of items, you know the videos of people trying to roll with like a shopping cart full of shit. While that shit no doubt does happen, it’s just not a daily thing across the country and there’s no question that it’s hardly as if these corps can’t eat that cost easily.
Convince people there’s total lawlessness, scare them into voting for ‘tough on crime’ legislators that are bought and paid for, use the illusion of mass anarchy and free for all shoplifting to gut low performing stores and not have the bad press of all those layoffs, rinse, repeat.
The only good thing about target is you’re paying more money for a worse selection but you don’t have to look at the people that typically shop at Walmart. That’s it.