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America’s great cities once stood as beacons of prosperity, culture and commerce. But today, many of them – especially those run by progressive, soft-on-crime leadership – are paying a staggering financial price for policies that put criminals ahead of communities.
It’s not just about feeling unsafe when you walk to dinner or shop downtown. Crime has a balance sheet. In poorly led cities, that balance sheet is bleeding red ink by the day.
The Retail Exodus
Let’s start with the retail sector. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), U.S. retailers lost $112 billion in 2022 due to theft, up from $94 billion the year before. In fact, in a recent study done by the NRF, retailers reported a 93% increase in the average number of shoplifting incidents per year in 2023 versus 2019 and a 90% increase in dollar loss due to shoplifting over the same time period.
That’s not just some rounding error – that’s the size of a medium country’s GDP wiped out because stores can’t keep merchandise on the shelves.
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Big-box retailers aren’t standing still. Target alone projected $500 million in additional losses this year due to organized retail crime, much of it concentrated in blue-city hot spots like San Francisco, Portland and New York. Walgreens has closed dozens of stores in San Francisco. Nordstrom pulled out of downtown.
These aren’t “mom-and-pop” shops without resources. These are billion-dollar corporations deciding it’s better to retreat than to keep bleeding. Does it seem insane to you that so many of these retail stores have to lock up much of the merchandise in these cities so people don’t loot, knowing that they will never be arrested?
What follows the theft is a double hit: jobs vanish, and so does sales tax revenue. In San Francisco, commercial vacancies are now at a whopping 34.8% in downtown. Empty storefronts mean lost payrolls, lost foot traffic and declining city budgets.
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When leadership shrugs at rampant shoplifting, the real victim isn’t the corporation – it’s the local community that loses its economic engine.
High-End Property Values Are Declining
Crime doesn’t stop at the register. It seeps into neighborhoods and undermines the largest financial asset most Americans own: their homes. In Chicago, blocks plagued by violent crime and open-air drug dealing are seeing higher-end condo and home values sink. Lower property values equal lower property taxes, which means less funding for schools, parks and infrastructure.
The Price Of Violence And Tourism
In New York, it costs $925 per day – or more than $337,000 per year – to incarcerate a single person. Yet instead of tackling the root causes of crime, city leaders continue to pump money into a cycle of arrest, release and repeat offenses. And overtime costs for the NYPD are spiraling as officers try to do more with less while politicians handcuff their ability to enforce the law.
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Tourists aren’t stupid. If you don’t feel safe in Times Square or Union Square, you’ll take your vacation dollars elsewhere. Conventions are steering clear of cities with reputations for lawlessness. That means lost hotel taxes, lost restaurant revenue, and lost brand value for cities that took decades to build their reputations.
Some 2 million fewer visitors from other countries are expected to make the trip to New York City this year, which could cost the Big Apple $4 billion in foreign tourism dollars for 2025.
For New York City in particular, the stakes are enormous. And if individuals like Zohran Mamdani – who’s already argued for slashing police budgets – get their way, the costs will only grow. Defunding enforcement in the nation’s largest city would mean higher crime, lower investment and billions more drained from the budget. It’s a recipe for financial disaster.
The Bottom Line
The cost of crime isn’t just what gets stolen from a store shelf. It’s measured in lost jobs, lower property values, higher taxes, ballooning public health costs and tarnished reputations. Poor leadership in blue cities is turning America’s once-great urban centers into cautionary tales of what happens when you stop enforcing the law.
If local leaders won’t prioritize public safety, they shouldn’t be surprised when businesses, families and capital walk away. Because, in the end, the real crime isn’t just happening on the streets – it’s in the budgets of poorly-led blue cities, where the cost of chaos is measured in billions.
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