Ben Sheppard

A few very obvious points on Mamdani's grocery stores: 1. The supply of the discounted groceries will run out on day 1, and every day there is a new shipment. This is basic econ 101. 2. This means only the people who are lucky enough or fast enough will get these discounted groceries. Expect to see the city ration these groceries in some other way. By income, or neighborhood or some lottery system. 3. Grocery margins are notoriously low as it is (like 2-3%). These stores will lose a bunch of money selling 30% below market, or they'll sell so little it will be insignificant. 4. There is absolutely zero chance that government bureaucrats can source these products from global supply chains as efficiently as Walmart, or Meier, or Whole Foods, whose survival depends on it. Their costs will be far higher (unless they use government bludgeon to force distributors to sell to them at lower prices). 5. It's actually an incredible triumph of capitalism that you can get a pound of bananas that were shipped to your neighborhood from Equador for like 60 cents, or fresh grapes from Chile in the dead of Midwestern winter for 2 bucks a pound, and Norwegian salmon to cook in Italian olive oil for $15 -20 bucks or so. Truly stop and think about that for a minute. It's a miracle. The median full time hourly wage is around $31 dollars. For ONE HOUR of work, the median working American can get all of the groceries listed below, which is about 22,000 calories. They can feed themselves for 10 days (or a family of 4 for around 2 and a half days), with an hour of labor. This is the stupidest industry for socialists to go after.