I think they’re correct though about the reason police does not feel very motivated to protect against this activity though. Defund the police + not-prosecutiing small crimes, etc… has been linked to the rise in crime rates.
As for impact on inflation, I seriously doubt it. The thefts are drops in the bucket compared to the scale of the economy.
The retail business has a small profit margin so the thefts have a disparate impact. We’ve all heard about multiple drug stores closing in Frisco and that is happening in other cities in California. One of the posters on this board, Patty53, is reconsidering going to the looted mall in the suburbs.
The California politicians have certainly noticed it. All of a sudden the San Francisco Soros district attorney Chesa Boudin is talking tough on crime since he’s facing a recall. Democrat California governor Gavin Newsom also suddenly noticed that crime is an important issue with voters.
I think @xerty was making a tongue-in-cheek comment there. It’s not a factor in inflation. But as @onenote points out, it is very much a factor in stores leaving certain communities or thinking twice before ultimately deciding not to locate there in the first place. The easiest way to ruin a neighborhood or keep a ruined neighborhood from improving make it harder for businesses to locate there.
Joe Manchin states the obvious. The use of oil from the strategic reserve is just theater after all of Biden’s handlers’ policies to cut US oil production
Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, issued the following statement on President Biden’s decision to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices.
"Today’s release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important policy Band-Aid for rising gas prices but does not solve for the self-inflicted wound that shortsighted energy policy is having on our nation. With an energy transition underway across the country, it is critical that Washington does not jeopardize America’s energy security in the near term and leave consumers vulnerable to rising prices. Historic inflation taxes and the lack of a comprehensive all-of-the-above energy policy pose a clear and present threat to American’s economic and energy security that can no longer be ignored. I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built which would have provided our country with up to 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies. To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country’s future.”
Sounds like a bunch of illogical bullshit:
The problem is that the oil is a world-wide commodity and higher demand drives its price on the futures market that everyone pays. Increased production anywhere world-wide is a reasonable answer to accommodate demand and drive the prices down, not the things he mentions.
If we nationalized the entire oil industry, we could set artificially low prices and be fully independent too, like Venezuela and Iran 
.
And prior to the defund the police movement, what was linked to rising crime?
Yes by you
The basic fact of oil production is the cost to extract. If it is too high, the oil is not extracted. So without the lower cost of delivery with the pipeline, the Canadian oil will not be extracted and will not be available to the United States.
Past tense is operative. The Biden handler policies have changed that and we are now a net importer. Yes the oil price is set as an international commodity but it is better to pay our domestic producers than our enemies like Russia for the oil. That is no longer possible because of the Biden handler policies. And the additional American production would serve to lower the price just like the extra availability of oil from the national reserve.
/sillymoronmodeon
Yeah, you’re just a racist. It is incumbent on businesses to expect to lose money in the community. It is their responsibility to provide products at no cost in the community. It’s been their duty since at least the 1300’s … or whenever woke history began. It will continue to be their duty for as long as they can stay in business.
/back-to-non-sillymoronmode 
Since when???
From your post, I’m unsure if you support Uncle Joe’s SPR release? From your post, it sounds like you think it’s stupid/pointless, but is that what you really believe?
Criminals.
I find it hard to believe that Canadians bailed on producing 900,000 barrels per day, and that’s now 900,000 barrels we are not receiving at all.
That pipeline was about efficiency, not supply. 900,000 barrels coming through the pipeline would’ve meant 900,000 less barrels coming via other means.
Yeah, I didn’t really think so but here are some numbers -
Typical retail profit margin 2-3%
“Organized” theft losses just under 0.1% of sales.
Sure, there’s more crime now since telling the police to not do their jobs as of last summer, but even if there was 0.1% more theft losses (as a % of sales) than before, you’d only need to increase prices by 0.1% to make up for it, and surely there was some level of (less brazen) theft going on before.
You nailed it. You just didn’t state the obvious. To wit:
The principal objective of the global climate change nut cases, where all fossil fuels are concerned, is:
Keep it in the ground
And I would add by all means necessary.
Even the Biden people themselves have conceded the safest way to transport that crude is via a pipeline. Yes, it is coming south anyway but through use of transport means far more prone to spills. But spill calamities well serve the goals of the climate change warriors, who “never let a crisis go to waste”.
I’m a natural gas (NG) person, not an oil or NGL (natural gas liquids) person. I spent years, over ten years ago, believing the phony objections to fracking raised by the climate change warriors. They claimed danger to groundwater. I knew that was wrong. But it took me years to wrap my head around their ruse. The groundwater thing was just a smokescreen. Their real objective was to shut down drilling and keep the NG in the ground. And in some states that ruse worked.
Today I’m older and understand the global climate change religion much better than I did prior. They will say anything and do anything to further their belief system. They are fanatics.
A good economists take on inflation and policy.
Politicians hate inflation because it means they can’t keep spreading money around… So they offer a string of excuses, just as they did in the 1970s—including lots of talk about ”supply shocks” and “bottlenecks” and “transitory” inflation —while hoping it all goes away.
The Biden administration, having just cancelled the Keystone pipeline, is now begging the Saudis and Russians to turn on the pumps, just as Richard Nixon pleaded with OPEC. The White House is accusing oil companies of colluding to raise prices. They will likely pressure other companies to limit price increases, as presidents from Kennedy to Ford did. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Every past inflation has sparked a witch hunt for “speculators,” “hoarders,” “middlemen,” “price-gougers,” and other phantasms. Let’s hope the government doesn’t try price controls, as Nixon did, precipitating gas lines and shortages of everything.
Meanwhile, the administration is re-messaging its spending plans as inflation-fighters. It won’t work. Consider the childcare plan, to take just one example, which they say will lower costs. The government will subsidize childcare while mandating higher wages for staff, more licensing requirements and inspections. Childcare costs will inevitably rise for the country as a whole. One can believe that it’s a good policy, and that it’s worth the cost, but it will make costs higher, not lower.
Politicians don’t want to face the hard reality that inflation brings, but inflation has a way of forcing change, as it did in 1980.
I well remember those Nixon price controls. What a fiasco!!
This is one way to stop inflation
Source please? Last I checked (and posted about it) there was no evidence of declining production in the USA (compared to 2019) and unless demand is now that much higher than it was in 2019, I don’t see how this could be, but I don’t really follow it that closely.
I thought it was around 2015, but maybe that was total energy. Looks like all oil products in Q4 of 2019. Production has not reduced since then according to what I’ve read.
The SPR release is just to increase supply, which may reduce the price a little. I don’t think it’s gonna make much difference and I neither support nor oppose it.
The United States was a net importer of 2.9 million b/d of crude oil in the first half of 2021.
https://www.google.com/m/search?q=united%20states%20net%20importer
