It just blows my mind that anything below, say, $75 is locked up at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen food items locked up in Europe, aside from genuine Parmesan, Iberico or expensive alcohol, and even then not consistently. Usually even the lower priced non-food (think a $50 space heater) stuff isn’t locked up.

Don’t get me wrong, we have smash and dash thieves here too, but usually they go for jewelry stores, fashion stores or Apple / electronic stores.

Thieves go for things that are easy to fence. For a while Tide-brand laundry detergent was famously easy to fence in some cities[1], so places had to lock up Tide.

[edit]

Teenagers who shoplift also go for things that are embarrassing or illegal for them to buy (condoms and alcohol respectively). So those are likely to be locked up as well.

1: My understanding is that drug-dealers &c. would accept payment in Tide and then sell that to organized crime, that would wholesale it to mom+pop corner stores.

Thank you for all the context so far!

That Tide factoid is darkly humorous. The selling it back to stores part makes me think of The Wire, Omar stealing a heroin shipment from Prop Joe and then selling it back to him: https://youtu.be/-q2LWHZ6O_M

In America’s defense, I’ll say that certain things are done much better than Europe.

There’s is certainly a better awareness/acceptance that growth = good. The entrepreneurial spirit also runs much stronger in your culture.

National (well, global) security is taken much more seriously, which I feel like is a facet of American federalization and thus unity. You won’t see a combined (and certainly not unified) European army for at least another few decades, everything thinks their own interests, independence and pride are too important.

I’ve lived my entire life in America (over 40 years) and I’ve never seen any food item “locked up”. I think that would be an indication that you are in a shitty area. Similar to the pictures I’ve seen of Burger King employees working behind bulletproof glass.