Zohran_Mamdani_at_the_Resist_Fascism_Rally_in_Bryant_Park_on_Oct_27th_2024
New York City's socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced one of the most ideologically revealing policy proposals in recent American municipal history — a plan to open five city-owned and subsidized grocery stores, one in each borough, by 2029.
The plan is quite straightforward in its socialist logic. The city would provide the building space, cover rent and property taxes, and fund the initial build-out at an estimated cost of sixty million dollars up front plus ongoing operations. In exchange, the stores would offer the core selection of basic groceries at thirty percent below typical retail prices, with prices locked in for a month at a time. Mamdani says this will save New Yorkers roughly ninety dollars per month on groceries.
The real history of government-run grocery stores looks quick different from Mamdani’s promise. Kansas City, Missouri, invested eighteen million dollars over a decade into a city-owned grocery store. It closed — plagued by theft, bare shelves, and a rancid odor. A city-owned store in Baldwin, Florida closed for the same reasons. Chicago's socialist mayor Brandon Johnson floated an identical proposal in 2023 and quietly dropped it. A viral video of the Kansas City store's desolate interior with nearly empty shelves was spread across social media with the caption: “watch this, Mamdani supporters.”
The economics of this New York City scheme are lacking, to say the least, but the human cost is very concrete. New York City has over fourteen thousand bodegas and delis — family-owned corner stores that are as much a part of New York's identity as yellow cabs and Central Park. These are businesses that operate on razor-thin margins, pay rent, pay property taxes, and compete honestly in the market. The president of the United Bodegas of America said plainly that his members cannot compete with a city-run store that pays no rent and no taxes. Even New York Governor Kathy Hochul pushed back, saying she favors free enterprise.
What Mamdani is really proposing isn’t just cheaper groceries. He is setting up government to compete against the very community institutions and immigrant family businesses that have served the working class of New York for generations. Mom and pop delis and shops are not the problem — government replacing them is.
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