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).
Mamdani’s plan is to have one store per burrow. There’s 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.
That’s basically what they are going to do. People will line up outside the store before it opens, buy everything cheap, and then it will run out. If a person struggling financially has to work that morning, tough luck. They’ll be buying their goods somewhere where it costs more but their taxes helped subsidize someone else’s food.
Personally I don’t truly care. I’m not anywhere close to NYC. Let them do as much of this stuff as they want to. It’s not going to impact me.
They are supermarkets this one sells fresh produce and meat. I pulled this picture from its Google Maps page but I also did this exact walk and saw the aisles myself on my last trip to NYC out of curiosity months back. 12 minutes walk northeast there is a dollar general fresh also selling produce, Food Fair which seemed great I wish I had a place like that near me. C Town markets selling meat and produce. Although that one seemed a little crummy like dirty low quality vibes.
There are more too going as far as a 20 minute walk but any more than that I would consider unreasonable. I gave you the address of where the store will be you can find all this on maps yourself like I did before I went there.
If that’s true, then I say go ahead and make sure to promote it so people understand that! No one with a brain will support what they think is government undercutting mom & pop shops by using tax dollars to drive em out of business... But if they realize it’s filling a gap rather than competing, then it’s a net positive for everyone. Perception matters!
Grocery stores have existed for centuries. If you haven't noticed that, then look around before you ask, "how is it supposed to work". The question is so deliberately antagonizing that it comes across as stupid.
This is so simple I assume you are being willfully obtuse.
If you have 2 entities in the same market selling the same product, and entity A is getting an extra injection of cash from somewhere, then entity B will have difficulty competing. Entity A can sell at lower prices.
This has nothing to do with what form of government is in place or what the product is. Understand?
In this particular case, Mamdami is creating entity A stores and injecting taxpayer money so the prices at store A are lower than store B. This is unfair to store B, and forces entity B out of business.
If the gov was completely hands off then it would just be monopolies, and we'd still be fucked. Maybe this whole capitalism thing doesn't actually help people.
It wouldn't be nearly as bad as you think if the government was hands-off. A big part of why competition doesn't exist for a lot of these companies is because of government intervention on the behalf of companies that bribe the government. A lot of companies that exist nowadays would not be capable of reaching the size they are now because they payed the government to let them pull the ladder up with them.
Correct, but they've replaced their slaves with cheap labor in other countries and easily replaceable minimum-wage workers, and have replaced their armies with lawyers. Different words, slightly different meanings, same purpose. The same thing would've happened even without government intervention.
let's just hope Mamdani can create enough grocery stores to feed all of NYC. Because afaik the definition of a food desert is a ~0.5 mile radius where it's difficult to buy food. But from what I know, nothing is stopping people from further than that going to this sort of store. So over time, unless the selection is very poor, odds are this will pull business away from many other stores who can't compete with tax subsidized prices. So it's very possible that a very large number of stores go out of business, and all that demand will consolidate around whatever is run by the city.
I don't know what to tell you, markup isn't the whole story, turns out it costs money to have a building and employees. But if you want them to go ahead and sell you food that expired yesterday to lower prices, go ask government to reduce regulations. (Btw I'm in favor of regulations, and I'm generally in favor of what Mamdani is doing, don't think I'm a republican here, but I just see this being something that's going to put pressure on stores near these ones in a way that could cause a cascade of closures if not managed well)
Okay so if the margins are so slim they can't handle any upset (like during covid), what's the alternative? Just letting them skim by while I get more and more squeezed? Until what?
Hence why I said Mamdani better be ready for this program to expand. Because widespread grocery store closures could make things much worse if these can’t expand fast enough. This program can work, my point is that it’s not simple grocery store greed preventing them from competing. Their costs are up too. So if the solution is to create a subsidized competition, it’s unreasonable to expect other stores to not be impacted and for that impact to need to be considered.
Stores already readily compete against eachother, the price of food is as low as it can be.
Prices currently are insane predominantly because of inflation. Under a communist system high priced would be traded for food just straight up running out in this scenario.
Alternatively, high prices can be caused by monopolies or collusion. We used to have agencies in this country to stop this from happening, and it worked and capitalism worked, but then Republicans stripped all the regulations and let things get bad.
This doesnt mean that capitalism fundamnetally cant work, it just means that when you destroy all the safeguards over the last 3 - 4 decades and let things rot things will get bad, which like yeah thats just what happens with any system. If you let communism rot it would be just as bad.
In this specific scenario btw some prices are actually higher than even inflation. its actually a monopoly of the producers of food, not grocery stores, so increasing competition in stores instead of supplyers will literally just make things worse without fixing any of the underlying problems.
The problem is that like 1 company makes 60% of eggs. not grocery stores.
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
Anyone using that pejorative will immediately be seen as an untrustworthy and unreliable source, sport. Use better language if you want to prove a point.
Also, you're assuming that the price of the goods will be close enough to cost that there will be any meaningful profit left over by reselling. Inventory is managed by truckloads of shipments from distributors, not from picking the bones of competition. You should stay in your lane if you're not gonna educate yourself on basic business practices, kiddo
Ya i dont understand either. I dont think theres any argument about wanting good food to go to less fortunate and good food to be available to all.
The issue I see is that its simply unfair to local grocery/corner stores that are locally owned and supply local jobs. The people saying in the comments that capitalism doesn't work, well this is kind of the government having an adverse effect on local shops just like wal mart does under a capitalist society. Wal mart comes in and has contracts with foods and goods that will always allow them to undercut all local mom and pop competition. For example Pepsi, wal mart has a contract with Pepsi that makes wal mart the cheapest pepsi in America. Mom and pops contractually cant sell pepsi as low as wal mart ever, because of these reasons wal mart has put 100s of thousands of mom and pop stores out of business. In manys opinion this is an unfair monopoly under capitalism.
So now if you own a local grocery/corner store in NYC and the city opens a store just down the street that contractually will always have lower prices than you, I dont know how you survive. So really for that mom and pop store what's the difference from losing your store unfairly to the capitalist monopoly of wal mart or the socialist city run grocery store?
The difference is that the socialist city run grocery store isn't preventing the local store from lowering their prices. These stores have no direct contracts with the local stores unlike most monopolistic mother companies vs child companies.
These stores are only offering the basics. If stores are going out of business over not competing on the basics then it's extremely telling how broken our society is.
It's a terrible idea. having a city government run a grocery store subsidized by taxpayers is beyond stupid especially when NYC is already one of the highest taxed cities in the country and still had to have the state govt. offer them budgetary aid to close their budget deficit.
NYC already taxes its citizens like a socialist state, and has terrible/middling results. Go look at their spending on public schooling and their academic results. Dont even get me started on the MTA mess. NYC is basically a socialist style funded city government with almost zero of the actual results of a socialist government. Mamdani's plan is basically, you gotta trust me, lets tax them more and promise more stuff to people... the government equivalent to a ponzi scheme.
Yes. And one by one the unsubsidized grocery stores will go out of business. As this happens, the size, scope, and number of state-funded stores will continue to grow. And as with everything else run by the government, the larger the program gets the more wasteful, inefficient, and burdensome to the taxpayers it becomes. Before long we will all be complaining about state-funded grocery stores the same way we complain about the DMV, crumbling roads and bridges, social security running dry, etc., etc.
But what happens to the privately owned store next door? Who will still go there?
If it truly hurts other small business owners in the area, I think it makes more sense to give poor people the money they would save as a tax cut/cheque/financial support so they can spend it at these small businesses.
The thing is these are going in food deserts so there is no direct competition nearby. It’s also produce, meats, and milk that are discounted and they won’t be selling alcohol, cigarettes, and lotto tickets-which are the items that are high profit for bodegas.
Food deserts are also defined by affordability. Prices are higher at city fresh compared to other nyc grocery stores. And in a low income neighborhood.
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u/throw7661 Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
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).