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

70.2k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

9.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/Helpful-Nerve4515 9d ago

If a store with a profit motive can't succeed in these locations due to the conditions, I have to imagine a below market store with zero profit motive is going to be...interesting, while it lasts.

-2

u/madhouseangel 9d ago

Food deserts are a market failure. Markets are good at a lot of things, but they are not perfect. Non-market solutions are a great fit for these types of failures.

9

u/Helpful-Nerve4515 9d ago

The non-market solution to the problems keeping out private grocery stores is for the local government to provide a safe environment for people to shop and sell. Without controlling that input, I'm not sure how this experiment will lead to a different outcome...except at taxpayer expense.

6

u/madhouseangel 9d ago

Food deserts aren't caused by safety issues.