I might misunderstand what you mean. But this is not something "grocery stores have access to."Â This is a city-run grocery store that competes with privately run stores. It is not just for snap beneficiaries.Â
I know exactly what it is. When my tax dollars are used to make them money through a state or federal program to create artificial low pricesâŠthey love that. Because they make profit off of my tax dollars.
Fuck them unless they cut me a refund check for that, itâs been 50ish years they were happy to take that windfall.
It really is funny to hear people talk this way. As it is, grocery stores offer discounts through "loyalty cards." Pricing is a game. Mamdani is trying to cut through all that bullshit and keep prices as low as possible while still turning a marginal profit. The city provides the space but rents the stores to private-sector operators. Taxpayers pay for the initial start-up. In time they will be reimbursed. Sounds like win-win to me.
I just now looked into it and it seems that the plan is to subsidize some groceries listed as essentials. So, the plan is not to have lower prices simply by not having profits or procing bullshit. It is subsidies from tax payers.Â
This is not planned to turn a "marginal profit" or be self sufficient. They take a loss on the groceries and do not pay rent or property tax for a location that a business would.
Not arguing if this is good or bad, but just trying to clarify according tp the published plans.
EDIT: there is actually going to be a private-public model. The locations are going to be privately run for profit. But the city is subsidizing the initiative through the capital investment to built and/or refit the locations and through incentives like not having to pay rent or certain taxes. Not taxing is of course an indirect subsidy. The private operators then have strict requirements about pricing, labor practices, operating practices etc. So, they are required to keep prices low, but are planning to turn a profit from the subsidized operating expenses.
The military doesn't make a profit, the USPS doesn't make a profit. These are services. I don't agree with the military, it's outrageously big. Id much rather tax dollars come back to us with cheap or free services and groceries or healthcare directly, instead of funnelling them into private organizations and hoping for the best
That is correct, but it is also a misunderstood fact often pushed by people who want to privatize all mail and disband the USPS. The "losses" were essentially manufactured unintentionally by the federal government.
A significant chunk of those $120 billion in recorded losses stemmed from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. This law forced the USPS to prefund 75 years worth of future retiree health benefits over a single decade. This is a strict financial burden placed on virtually no other government agency or private corporation. The USPS ultimately defaulted on tens of billions of dollars of these payments because it simply didn't have the cash. What organization would?
The act in 2006 was a bipartisan act with overwhelming support largely because congress thought they were cleverly fixing an accounting issue. The USPS was doing so well prior to this that it was overpaying into its pension funds in order to protect pensions in case of future liquidity issues. But due to quirks in federal accounting this would mean that when they stopped overpaying (because they got the rainy day funds they intended) it would have a hugely negative impact on the federal budget.
So, congress tried to keep those overpayments going with the 2006 act. But it was a huge mistake because they put the burden way too high and there was a pending revenue problem with first class mail demand plummeting. This was also bipartisanly recognized as a blunder. USPS was allowed to default on its payment obligations established in the 2006 act. Those defaulted funds are booked as losses and accumulated debts. The the act was repealed in 2022. But USPS is still dealing with the consequences.
So, these losses are basically an accounting issue caused by a legal trap that no one really intended and they have never been subsidized by tax payer dollars.
Everything in the current economy is subsidized by the tax payer, look into how many grants SpaceX receives to do the same shit as NASA but worse and private. Its the same in every sector but you only hear conservatoids bitch if its going towards helping people instead of megacorporations.
The military started the PX system in 1895 to prevent soldiers being charged unfair prices. Price fixed goods have been a sucessful thing for a long time
Fuck em all the way. Im making sure Im obnoxiously loud of how much I hate corporations and want them all to fail. They get zero sympathy from me. I could find a corporation bleeding out, alone in the street and rest assured Im leaving it with more holes than I found it with. Fuck corporate America to death
Except it doesn't, a grocery store five times the size of my apartment serving 70 thousand people who currently have three bodegas and two micro grocery stores. La marqueta is already a city subsidized market. You're just making things up. Nobody has demonstrated that these other stores will suffer any rela harm, and the good of more cheap fresh food outweighs it
Have my tax dollars been used to artificially lower the price of groceries and grocery stores have made a profit on that purchase?
Yes or no.
Forget this idea that you want to fight me about communist grocery stores. I know that's what you have a boner to talk about but that's not what I'm advocating. I'm pointing out some undeniable hypocrisy. If a government program can make them profit they are fine with using my tax dollars, if a government program creates difficulty for them...then they get angry.
I mean, I am in favor of this program. But as a public service, not as proof against grocery stores. The "reasonable prices" are not planned to come from a lack of profit interest. The stores are planned to run at a loss while also paying no property tax or rent. Tax money is making up the loss on the lowered prices. The point is to provide subsidized groceries to low income areas.Â
The city run grocery stores are not planned to be self sufficient. They are subsidized and will pay no rent or income tax where a business would.Â
If you are in favor of this initiative, you should be in favor of it as a public service. The stores will run at a loss made up by tax payers. The idea is wealth redistrubution, not market competition.Â
Wouldn't directly giving money to people who need it be more effective than spending money on overhead, subsidizing losses, and missed tax revenue of running a public grocery store?
Running franchise shops that donât turn a profit but only exist to run locally owned shops out of business by undercutting them is a favourite tactic of large chains.
They never seem to have an issue with it when theyâre the ones doing it.
Such a misleading headline. Grocery stores tend to run on a 2-3% margin. The âreasonable pricesâ are going to be using taxpayer funds to offset the difference.
Certainly not the argument for socialism that they are trying to push.
Why do you think it will be cheaper if paid in taxes instead of groceries?
If it's paying $50 less on groceries but $50 more on taxes, is it still good?
But realistically, the people getting cheaper groceries are only the ones living near these 5 stores. I'm a fan of redistributive taxes, but I generally want redistribution from rich to poor, not from rich to people who happen to live near these store locations.
mamdaniâs stores would operate explicitly at a deficit which would be made up for by tax funding. obviously a private business cant just eat a deficit and use tax money to cover the loss lol
Can't. Grocery stores operate on 1-3% profit margins. There's no way they can compete against stores that don't have to pay rent and have tax payers subsidizing groceries.
It's more of a "If we have to compete with those prices, we'll ONLY be able to give our CEO a $20 million bonus this year. How will he get by on that little!?!?"
The complaint is coming from local family operated grocery stores and bodegas. There are no big corporate owned grocery stores in the Bronx other than one Stop & Shop. Food Bazar is the biggest one and theyâre owned by a local family in Queens who started the store in the 1980s.Â
Iâm all for the idea NYC is doing, but a for profit business will always have a hard time competing against a non-profit because the business model is wildly different
However, these stores were also put in food deserts
They aren't "reasonable prices" if they are subsidized by the state. The state can sell things far below market value because it could not care less about losing money.
So? The federal government heavily subsidizes the corn industry. They also subsidized the dairy industry. Anyone remember when the feds literally bought up tons and tons of American cheese wheels and stored them in dry caves for mold and spoilage control, and started handing out blocks of government cheese for free? Taxes should be used to help pay for services that help American society at large, especially the poorest and neediest of us.
So that's the whole point of the post. You've expanded it from "these private businesses can't compete therefore capitalism is invalid," which is stupid, to "these subsidies are a drop in the bucket and worth it compared to all the other subsidies we have," which is a fair opinion to have, but not what the person is criticizing.
That's great and all, just don't say they're fair prices. You're taxing the private store and with that money subsidize the government one which competes with that exact store. Then go and call that store out for having unfair prices. Do that over and over again and you'll run out of private businesses that you can tax.
And when the Soviet Union had exactly this policy, people just traded goods on the black market because prices didn't reflect actual supply and demand.
There were shortages of things people wanted and surpluses of things people didn't want specifically because prices were controlled by the state rather than the market.
Bad for the thousands (turns out there's somewhere between 7k and 13k bodegas across the five boroughs) of immigrant bodega owners they'll be undercutting.
The only massive issue is that those stores start hemorrhaging money like no other and go out of business in record time. It has happened every time in the US where these plans were drawn up. We have to learn from the mistakes of the past or we are just going to continually repeat them
I genuinely don't understand what people are talking about.
These grocery stores are supposed to be cheaper because they are using tax payer dollars to reduce the costs.
Of course, an unsubsidized store will be unable to match their prices. That's the entire point.
These stores won't be 'cheaper'. They will have lower prices at the register. For lower income people, who pay less in taxes, this will be a net gain for them. For someone who makes more money, they will end up paying more. Because it's funded by taxes. And, indeed, they will be paying for it, even if they don't use it.
It's fine if you think this is a great system. And it's fine if you think it's a bad system.
But it's ridiculous to think regular grocery stores should be able to compete with it
It's like comparing the cost of public elementary school (free to me, but the state spends $20k per kid per year) to a private elementary school that I have to pay $15k for.
Most of the people who are against that types of social programs will happily admit that it works, in the immediate term. The long term implications are bad though (according to them).
Mamdaniâs plan is to have one store per burrow. Thereâs too many people in each burrow to be serviced by a single grocery store. The rest of the stores will still have massive overflow demand.
Also, there is more ways than just cost to for grocery stores to compete. Theres the type of products that grocery stores can sell. Theres quality of product that stores can compete with. They can do some hybrid of the three as a way to partially cut prices but in a way to maintain profits.
The point is that this is the retarded version of food stamps... It's not means tested. A rich person can go bulk up (as far as the store rules allow) and then go sell it at market price in his own store
Kind of like how Walmart's employees are largely on public assistance and the company payroll is subsidized by the government, except flipped so that it benefits the tax payer and not the corporate billionaire.
Complete moron. Grocery stores operate at one of the smallest profit margins. Usually only around 2%. They do not control the price of food, the distributors do.
This is just burning tax payer money to operate at a loss while killing actual functioning businesses that arenât doing anything wrong. Hopefully the lawsuit succeeds.
Dude, they canât compete with prices that are cut by 30% because their margins are just 3%. If they charged those prices theyâd go out of business. These government stores will need taxpayers to bail them out to stay in business.
This shows the complete opposite point and people agreeing with the tweet are seriously exposing their ignorance and lack of understanding of economics.
Not trying to be pedantic, but the prices arenât âreasonableâ. They are defined as 30% less than the monthly market average. So if the capitalists offered groceries at cost, the Mamdani approach would set prices at 30% less than costâŠ. Which is unreasonable.
Study the actual history of Communism & anybody with any common sense & critical thinking skills anymore will understand pretty quickly why this is absurd.
I mean I love the dude and support everything he does, including this initiative but this tweet is idiotic. Of course a private company can't compete with a company that is funded by the government. If I sell stuff for 10 and get a profit for 1 and another person next to me sells stuff for 8 make a loss for 1 which gets funded by the government, I can't really compete can I
Privately held companies shouldnât have to compete with government subsidized companies. Subsidizing private companies and theyâll compete just fine
đ€Ł the idiocy of the left once again on display. This would only make sense if the city run grocery store operated as a separate entity and had the same regulations as privately owned businesses.
Shocker that a for profit store canât keep up with a competitor that sells things under cost. That alone is not a good metric on why capitalism is bad lol.Â
We have these in my home state. They aren't going to look like the picture. They're a godsend to people who need them.
But they typically dont have a lot of variety and they run their stocked goods pretty low because they have a razor budget. Not having a huge overhead from office/executive staff helps keep prices low, as well as not overstocking.
Again, they're amazing. But they aren't taking from grocery stores.
Wow! You mean we could all be spending less money on food so we could stay healthier so we can go to work less sick and tired so we can make more money for the fucking companies we work for??? God im sick and tired of capitalism
As a native and still resident of NYC, Iâd state that 5 supermarkets among a shitload of âBodegasâ will not make a dent in any businessâ pockets. This is much to do about nothing. If bodegas which are really meant for one to stop in quickly and get 1-2 things is really bitching then they as any supermarket should lower their prices too daily.
Terrible point. What are "reasonable prices"? Grocery stores run on the thinnest profit margins of any business. If NYC can run grocery stores more cheaply, it's only because of direct subsidies funded by taxes, or indirect ones like letting the store operate lease-free on NYC-owned property. There is nothing competitive about it; it is basically what Amazon and other corporations do: bankrupt competitors by lowering prices below profitability, except now funded by taxpayers.
Yeah it's a good point if you don't think about it literally at all.Â
The government can create any subsidized competitor it wants to destroy any private industry it wants, the problem is that tax money dries up eventually. The government is not a magic lamp that you can rub 3 times and say the magic words "socialism" into to get whatever you want.
"Oh, a capitalist entity can't compete with the unfettered power of the state being used to deliberately undercut them using an infinite supply of tax revenue to subsidize losses? Guess you're not really about "fair markets" after all, har har"
This makes no fucking sense. If ANY government got into the government-run grocery business it would be able to undercut every single private business in the area, because, you know... it is a government. No private business would ever be able to compete with ANY form of government economic model. It is a matter of scale, not model. Not to mention, only the Mayor is a Communist, the city of New York is still FIRMLY operating on Capitalistic principles and funding. Typical Communism - needs someone else's money to steal.
Not to mention that people supporting ignore the ID requirement and the fact that it will be stripped and the goods resold at a higher profit. This will help no-one as intended.
This just shows how out of touch a lot of Redditors are on this topic. No, a private business will never be able to compete with a business that is getting massive government subsidies and is willing to run at a loss. Now there is a huge issue with food in this country that isn't the point of this thread, but the point made by Cheri makes no sense and is obvious to anyone with a brain.
I get why Mamdani has done this for food deserts etc but if these are reasonably priced and there isn't losses in running etc, how is this sustainable and why wouldn't everyone want to go to these in NY?
If there are losses in operation this is incredibly questionable.
I get why he has done it, but I think what he has done is not wise.
These food deserts exist for any number of reasons, but these reasons have not been resolved. If they were, I'm certain that stores would return to these locations. The stores he intends to open will face the very same issues that caused the stores in these food deserts to leave.
Opening these stores will not address the issues behind high prices and food deserts. All it will do is create stores that end up facing the very same problems that caused the stores that used to be there to leave.
Edit: That the taxpayer has to pay for to watch fail.
The words "with reasonable prices" is loaded with subjectivity. Stores need to make a profit on the items they sell. If the question is "are they price gouging?", thats another story. The fact is that the only way Mamdani will have lower prices is by either being fully non profit or by subsidizing the individual item prices with tax payer money. Either way its government manipulation of the market place and that is not only directly in conflict with the free market but also will eventually eliminate the private grocers altogether leaving only government owned and operated stores which will then slowly increase in price also and limit the availability of food overall. Sound like the perfect communist implementation to me......
Will the for-profit grocery store now be subsidized with no rent or income tax just like the city run grocery stores? Just trying to compare apples to apples.
lol state run grocery stores have been tried many times and donât work. They may offer a short term adjustment and have an impact on the other private grocery stores (hence their frustrations and lawsuit) but not a long term fix.
Also donât forget the National Supermarket Association represents independent grocery stores, many of them minority owned and operated. Which means that these government grocery stores are impacting minority business owners. The larger markets may not care as much because they can weather the storm, but this hurts the small business owners who canâtâŠ
Grocery stores have razor thing margins they canât just lower the price as they will lose money. They canât compete with the publicly funded ones as those can charge less and still make profit as they get funded by taxes.
Canât wait for reality to hit. Grocery store margins are really freaking thin as it is. Wait for the reduction in supply. That will be fun, but no one ever learns the lessons from history.
There ought to be at least one major socialist country in the world, so that every capitalist could point to it and say, "What, do you want to live like that?"
Those grocery stores are going to be a nightmare if they ever see the light of day, simply because there will be so much demand that nothing will ever be on the shelves.
ah yes, the subsidized grocery stores funded with taxpayer money surely won't harm the private owned stores that need to make money to exist. I wonder how will the supply work when every other private store closes and demand for these taxpayer funded stores increases dramatically. It will surely don't end in shortages right? Right?
You mean, Capitalism admits it can't compete with taxpayer-subsidized grocery stores.
When you take money from other people, then turn around and use it as subsidies to undercut the profits of taxpaying businesses...yeah, no shit businesses can't compete. The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money. Then the whole system collapses...
We have literally federal proof Walmart engages in price fixing. They worked with Pepsi to have Pepsi raise prices on competition if they were selling for less than Walmart. This was a whole investigation under Biden but after Trump took office they just gave up the case.
He should make a video podcast series where he confronts these CEOs and make them state on camera why they are jacking up grocery prices. Make them pick a side
This post is extremely misleading. He is being sued because he is using tax money to fund 5 supermarkets that will be priced under market value. So the taxes paid by actual stores will fuel government funded markets that reduce their income.
Not arguing for against this program, but I think the answer to your question is that the city is subsidizing the groceries with tax payer money. They will operate at a loss and therefore set an impossoble price.Â
Yeah but these stores are heavily subsidized by taxpayers so you're not really making a more efficient system to compete on the free market you're just stealing people's tax dollars that probably cost much more in the long run
Those grocery stores are funded by the city - they are build by the city, they don't pay rent, they don't pay property tax, It's not a reasonable price, it's subsidized and they couldn't maintain those prices without the city's subsidies. The Reddit lefties are just brain dead.
Reasonable? Under cutting family owned business by 30% on core items is reasonable? Wtf. Obviously you arenât a business owner, nor do you have compassion for family owned businesses. Think big picture, not your little fucked up world.
Well, except this particular example is certainly socialism. The stores will not be self sufficient. They will be heavily subsidized with tax payer money.Â
It is a public service to low income areas. If you are in favor of this program, I would encourage you to be in favor of socialism to at least some degree.Â
Just implement it and see other grocery stores go out of business because they canât operate at a loss. If the only way to show what happens is to implement it then just do it. Freeze the rents, make landlords do repairs that are needed (that parts fair) but then not let them raise rent to afford to do these repairs.
Implement it all, and show the world how good these policies are. Canât wait to see it
And then once they do open are the corporations are forced to compete, the argument will be â we canât keep our staff on in this environmentâ and people get laid off. In reality, theyâre laying people off and running skeleton crews as it is to appease shareholders.
I mean, if everything worked ok, prices on regular stores would be lower because companies need to lower the prices to remain competitive. The problem is that different seemingly rival companies, will just secretly agree on the prices. And helping those in need isn't really socialism, it's just basic human empathy.
Grocery stores run on thin margins for most products. The problem with state run grocery stores isn't "reasonable prices", its subsidized products at lower prices. You want to bitch about mega corporations undercutting mom and pop stores by using this same tactic, but when its the state its totally cool.
Duh! The reason they canât compete with reasonable prices is because a) you people keep demanding higher wages b) healthcare is expensive c) trump is an idiot that started too many wars during an inflationary period d) because there are two many lazy workers using PTO in scam like manners e) injuries
I both applaud Mamdani and point out that subsidized grocery stores are a portion, maybe the smallest portion, of the real solution. When did the USSR know it lost the Cold War? When its leader visited a grocery store in Houston, Texas. We need to address all the very real pressures that are forcing prices high. Sadly, the damage is mostly self-inflicted.
30% below market is not reasonable - especially when the grocery stores are running a 2% profit margin. These âreasonableâ prices are only an option because he is taking money from taxpayers to subsidize the losses these stores will take.
Why not give existing grocery stores some sort of incentive to match pricing instead of push them out of business with these grocery stores? Most of these markets are run by immigrantsâŠ.
They're not worried about competing with fair prices... they're worried about competing against government subsidies. A robust competitive private sector can generally deliver goods and services more cheaply than the government. But if the government throws in lots of taxpayer money to subside a product, then the playing field is unfair.
The "reasonable price" is the much larger pool of money (taxes) than a standard market would have. Overhead costs would also be magically lifted due to not paying property taxes.
Think of it as companies like McDonalds and other big food businesses going to Europe and selling at a net loss profit. Their other sources of income make up for that loss in this sector. Running at a loss and with low prices, customers gravitate towards it. Higher quality but more expensive places slowly lose customers until they go under and then McDonalds buys that land. Once they hold a large enough market, they jack prices back up for a net profit (arguably too high a price) but there are no other or very few options to go to. This is called predatory pricing. It is hard to do as a individually or public owned company, but is very easy to do as the government.
Now, the government of NYC can write off certain expenses that they'd have to pay to themselves, they have a larger pool of constant money from taxes, so they can afford to drastically undercut the competition in an non 1 for 1 match up. They would naturally run with a roughly 30% lower cost due to subsidies, state owned land, no taxes, etc. Let's assume Mamdani runs it well and several other stores lose business and close. Let's assume Mamdani never raises prices. Next Mayor comes in "we have a deficit and are losing money in these stores. Let's raise prices." Now a few corrupt officials can just raise the cost and drain their people dry of money. Let's assume Mamdani will never do this as he is a saint. What about the next guy? What if a Republican got a hold of the stores? This can so very easily lead to a government held monopoly where any saint or corrupt employee could lower or raise prices on a whim. The lawsuit is an antitrust/anti-monopoly lawsuit. Something you'd cheer on if it was going after Amazon or some other big business but boo when it goes after your favorite suit in the government.
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