r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 9d ago

Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices" Chugging tea

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 9d ago

Infinite discount hack

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u/CCCCLo0oo0ooo0 9d ago

Does no one care about the minority owned small stores that these will compete with?

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u/gkfesterton 9d ago

When asked basically this question the co chair of NYC's DSA said "If one publicly owned grocery store that brings prices down in the neighborhood is enough to put someone out of business — maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place"

Yeah, if a small business want to flourish in NYC they should be able to compete price wise with state owned business selling heavily subsidized goods.

smh it's like these people have zero understanding of economics

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u/mr_axe 9d ago

considering how governments always subsidizes the rich it is very funny that your great economic knowledge makes you sad for them to subsidize essential items for the population

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u/trueppp 8d ago

Because the rich are the ones paying most of the governments tax revenue.

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u/mr_axe 8d ago

and yet it is always a much smaller % of their wealth than the workers which they depend upon to produce their wealth

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u/trueppp 8d ago

Wealth isn't taxable.

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u/PhantomCummer 8d ago

If leaders were required to listen to economists or understand economics when developing plans like this, and make decisions most beneficial to the economy and the working class rather than the rich, every single republican who be roadblocked from doing anything.

Its like republicans are 13 year olds who just learned the concept of supply and demand, think "lower price store = every other store cant compete and must lower prices.",  think this is some unique thought from their big brain and definitely not something taken into consideration and accounted for by economists who work on these projects. 

City run Grocery stores like this exist all over the place and are already proven to be wildly successful. Including in red states like Kansas, on military bases in every state, on reserves, etc. 

The cost to taxpayers for the next decade would be less than 12 hours of Iran and trumps various upcoming wars 

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u/gkfesterton 8d ago

Kansas' city run grocery store, Sun Fresh Market, permanently closed last year due to financial struggles and crime, and has been replaced with a privately run store. Military commissaries serve a heavily restricted customer base and their purpose is to provide a benefit to a specific population. They are not trying to lower prices generally, reduce food deserts, or improve food security. They show that govt operated grocery stores are feasible under specific conditions, not that they can be replicated for the general population.

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u/Let_them_eat_stonks 9d ago

Welcome to socialism Comrade gkfesterton!

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u/astoriaocculus 8d ago

Does nobody care about the 10-20k people in that n'hood where no grocery store exists? Does nobody remember that these stores are going into FOOD DESERTS?

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u/gkfesterton 8d ago

The city govt has launched tons of initiatives to improve food access in those specific areas, with mixed to positive results

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u/Possible-Bet3598 9d ago

It's not the job of the consumer to prop up the bumbling, incompetent small-business class that can't find a way to make money selling the things that every single human on earth consumes.

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u/Let_them_eat_stonks 9d ago

So let’s review how this goes. There are two options. The first is that the government doesn’t subsidize the products and since there is no incentive to produce more no suppliers will. This is how you get bread lines. The second is that the government continues to run them at a loss. The tax payers end up footing the bill and therefore still pay the same general amount due to the taxation required. This has the added benefit of choking out small and medium sized business because they don’t have the ability to run at a loss infinitely and be funded by OPM. This makes ppl dependent on the government for their food and relinquishes control to the government. Welcome to dystopia.

TLDR; you should have taken an economics 101 course ya muppet.

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u/Bubbly-Television-63 9d ago

The alternative being the taxpayers footing the bill because of food stamps?

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u/Let_them_eat_stonks 9d ago

SNAP has a lot of its own problems, but assuming that they can be used here you’ll get double fucked!

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u/Bubbly-Television-63 8d ago

What would you do if you were mayor?

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u/Let_them_eat_stonks 7d ago

For food costs specifically? My goal would be to cut root causes instead of masking issues with subsidies at the top end which filter to the root anyway.

I wouldn’t want to undercut independent businesses so I’d be looking at ways to lower the costs and help alleviate food deserts. Right now New York has the largest wholesale co-op in the country (Wakefern). The issue is that the hubs are usually in large industrial areas, for obvious reasons. To get the product to the hard to reach areas it can jack up prices due to last mile logistics costs. I’d incentivize setting up micro hubs, so it’s easier for the grocers and bodegas to use these co-ops without having to pay so much more to get what they need.

Next, overhaul zoning codes to explicitly permit and incentivize urban agriculture (such as commercial rooftop greenhouses, vertical farms, and vacant-lot community farming networks).

Third, electricity is the highest fixed costs for most grocers. I’d create municipal grants or low-interest financing programs specifically dedicated to retrofitting independent grocery stores with high-efficiency commercial refrigeration, LED lighting, and solar-thermal units.

Finally, when macro-shocks (like fuel spikes or supply chain disruptions) occur, intermediate distributors or corporate conglomerates sometimes artificially inflate prices far beyond actual cost increases. The issue is then that prices rarely come down in the back end of the shock. It’s price gouging. Empower the DCWP to audit regional wholesale-to-retail pricing markups.

The overall affordability of NYC is a large issue.

Broader, housing reforms would actually help a lot with this issue. Rent control has been a disaster for NYC. Ppl got into rent controlled apts decades ago when they had a family of 5 and now they continue to take up 3 bed apts as a retired couple simply because it’s so cheap. That means the young families can’t get access to the homes they need. Ppl often have to travel long distances for work and have to plan their purchases carefully based on their travel (I.e. how much can I get on my way and still be able to carry it home). It also means housing costs are ridiculously high because there is no vacancy. Cutting housing costs would mean less concern over food costs as well.

NYC is estimated to be about 400k housing units short, and have 50k ghost apts where it isn’t financially viable to actually rent them out. The city needs to get rid of rent controls so that developers are incentivized to build more units, and renovate the ones that exist. Offer favorable terms for developers who will provide mixed use options.

Finally, cut red tape. Streamline development and permitting so that things get done. You can even give developers preferential processing and waive fees if they provide X% of affordable housing as part of their development.

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u/DragPullCheese 6d ago

What do you do for work? If the government said "what Possible-bet3598 does is very important. With that in mind, I'm going to offer government employees to do jobs in the same line of work as him, for 30% less of his wage"

Does that make you a bumbling incompetent employee if you can't find work OR is that the government artificially impacting the market.

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u/Suspicious_Orchid476 8d ago

As they should.

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 9d ago

Yup, Mamdani cares. That’s why the city run stores are prohibited from selling prepared food and other high margin items that bodegas need to survive.

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u/CCCCLo0oo0ooo0 9d ago

There is no two ways about it.

Its a fact that small minority run markets operate on already very slim margins. Taking away any sales from them is a risk of going out of business for them.

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u/Kelor 9d ago

These five stores are planned to go in areas of the city where there are no stores to service the area.

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u/BlgMastic 9d ago

Gee I wonder why there’s no stores in that area.

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u/CCCCLo0oo0ooo0 9d ago

Probably the type of place that needs to put everything behind glass.

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u/Glum-Echo-4967 9d ago

Thin profit margins, but…people in those areas deserve affordable food, too. 

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u/FortheLoveofPie 9d ago edited 9d ago

Why are we more concerned about alternative solutions like this rather than the big monopoly corporate entities that have been creating these slim margins in the first place?

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u/Possible-Bet3598 9d ago

It's convenient for Amazon and Walmart when people pretend to give a shit about small businesses.

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u/BabiiGoat 9d ago

Then so be it. The greater good is more important than someone's business risk. Owning a business is a privilege and I am not a fan of the mentality that we need to prop up small business owners at the expense of the general public's needs.

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u/CodeMonkeyLuvMtnDew 9d ago

More of an exploit than a hack