I've gotten a lot of little tidbits from my boss that are interesting, but I just learned something that blows all that out of the water and reframes everything.
The store I work in, a convenience store/pharmacy of medium size in a spot somewhere between the suburbs and the city, pays $50k a month in rent.
Think about how much more you're charged for products than they cost to produce. Set aside the actual Capitalists in the process, they at least facilitate production. Think about how much extra money you've been spending just so that retailers can meet the demands of some company that has a piece of paper that says they own the land.
Apparently in big cities, the rent can get over $200k a month.
At the height of covid the store I worked in made 1 million every two days, I was sitting nearby and managed to hear the store manager whisper that to my department manager
She also told them it was the best they've done since 9/11
So even at a conservative estimate of earnings, the store is paying less than 3% of its revenue in rent.
Wait no sorry, I'm not op, I was just providing my own example, the company in my case owned the building and the plot of land, but utilities and taxes probably didn't exceed 5%
I know, I was saying that based on a factor of 4 from "200k a month".