- Feb 5, 2002
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New York City’s new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to open city-run grocery stores to lower costs and help the working class with his socialist policies.
City-owned and managed grocery stores have resurfaced as eye-catching policy ideas to lower food costs and fight hunger. However, they will have the opposite effect: wasting taxpayer money, promoting inefficiency and hurting local food businesses.
He argues that these stores are needed to address supposed food “deserts,” which are usually crime-ridden areas that retailers often avoid. He also claims the groceries will provide working-class New Yorkers with better access to affordable food. His pilot program consists of launching five stores across the city, one in each borough. It is all part of his socialist platform, which, besides lowering grocery costs, also includes freezing rent and increasing corporate taxes to fund this project.
A closer examination of the plan reveals it cannot succeed because it entirely replaces market signals—such as costs, property rights, profit and the profit motive—with bureaucratic decision-making. He proposes the classic Marxist alternative to a free market economy.
Continued below.
www.tfp.org
City-owned and managed grocery stores have resurfaced as eye-catching policy ideas to lower food costs and fight hunger. However, they will have the opposite effect: wasting taxpayer money, promoting inefficiency and hurting local food businesses.
Mamdani’s Plan: Bad Economics
Mamdani bases the need for city-run grocery stores on a socialist theory rather than hard data. This is a blatant feel-good dream that denies basic economics. This sounds very good on paper, ‘free’ always does, until the money needed to fund the free goods cannot be found.He argues that these stores are needed to address supposed food “deserts,” which are usually crime-ridden areas that retailers often avoid. He also claims the groceries will provide working-class New Yorkers with better access to affordable food. His pilot program consists of launching five stores across the city, one in each borough. It is all part of his socialist platform, which, besides lowering grocery costs, also includes freezing rent and increasing corporate taxes to fund this project.
A closer examination of the plan reveals it cannot succeed because it entirely replaces market signals—such as costs, property rights, profit and the profit motive—with bureaucratic decision-making. He proposes the classic Marxist alternative to a free market economy.
Continued below.
Mamdani’s Socialist Grocery Store: Shopping in the Aisle of Denial
New York City’s new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to open city-run grocery stores to lower costs and help the working class with his socialist policies. City-owned and managed grocery stores have resurfaced as eye-catching policy ideas to lower food costs and fight hunger. However...
www.tfp.org
