The Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, wants his city to run grocery stores. But historically, government-run grocery stores haven’t worked well, says Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds:
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has a lot of dumb ideas….the dumbest of his ideas may be his plan for government-run grocery stores….Business owners across New York City and the nation have denounced Mamdani’s plan as a Soviet-style disaster….In the old Soviet Union, the government did in fact run the grocery stores.
Shelves were often empty. Lines were absurdly long. Product quality and service were, to put it mildly, horrible.
In fact, things were so bad in the government-run grocery stores (and department stores, and clothing stores) that there were separate stores for the big shots, the nomenklatura as Soviet citizens resentfully called them….It’s such a bad idea that the wildly unpopular Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson considered it, too — and gave it a pass. Johnson conducted a feasibility study that he never made public, but the idea was apparently such a disaster that he never even tried to claim subsidies that the state of Illinois had made available for the purpose.
The feasibility study likely concluded, as any bodega owner could attest, that the grocery business is notoriously low-margin — and, even in so-called “food deserts,” fiercely competitive….Several American towns and smaller cities have tried to launch publicly owned grocery stores, usually when the last local market closed in the face of big-box competition. All have met with uniformly dreadful results.
Some point to the 17 states that successfully run state liquor stores to contend that a state-run grocer can work, too. But that’s a terrible argument: State-run liquor stores derive from a post-Prohibition decision to limit alcohol consumption by making it inconvenient and expensive….
Heavy taxpayer subsidies would be needed to make a government-run grocery store work. And if they did, they could be used to enrich wealthy developers and buy votes:
A well-located city grocery is worth big bucks from a developer. A grocery store in a neighborhood full of your supporters helps keep them sweet.
A neighborhood or developer that doesn’t support you can be punished by closing a store, or limiting its stock, or letting it run down.
The New York Post says “Socialist Mamdani wants to pay for government grocery stores with money that doesn’t exist”:
Democratic socialist and mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani apparently wants to pay for his city-run grocery stores by using taxpayer funds that don’t actually exist.
The Queens assemblyman — who handily won the Democratic primary over ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — has implied that he could pull from $140 million in city subsidies directed at “corporate grocery stores” for his proposal.
But that pot of money is actually what private businesses have invested thanks to the program, called City FRESH, over a 12-year span, according to the city’s website.
Experts have said that government-run grocery stores lose money, result in increased food waste, and tend to offer a more limited selection of foods.
Mamdani has called for pulling police out of high crime areas. He denounced the New York Police Department [NYPD], writing, “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety. What we need is to Defund The NYPD.” Mandani also said that “Queer liberation means defund the police.”
Zohran Mamdani has called for emptying jails, because “VioIence is an artificial construct.”
Mamdani also proposed arbitrary, extreme restrictions on rent that would leave landlords with too little money to maintain housing units, which could turn much of New York into a slum.
Laura Gillen, a House Democrat on Long Island, recently criticized Zohran Mamdani, saying, “Socialist Zohran Mamdani is too extreme to lead New York City. His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs. Beyond that, Mr. Mamdani has called to defund the police and has demonstrated a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable antisemitic comments which stoke hate at a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing. He is the absolute wrong choice for New York.”
