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.
I know someone who used to work in restaurants and said that each year rent was going up, even though there's literally only so much they can raise prices or serve more people. It'll eventually just shut places down