View all Articles
Commentary By Nicole Gelinas

The Problem with Grocery Stores Isn’t Profits. It’s Reality.

Economics Cities, Tax & Budget

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s fresh Democratic nominee for mayor, devotes 126 words and a 43-second TikTok on his website to a signature proposal: “city-owned grocery stores.” This brevity might imply that function will follow form, that the idea is so self-evidently sensible that little needs to be said about it.

What this self-assurance shows, though, is that Mr. Mamdani knows nothing about the grocery business, raising broader questions about the practicality of an assertive socialist agenda like his.

He claims that “a network of city-owned grocery stores” would offer cheaper food and dry goods because it would avoid paying rent or property taxes, “buy and sell at wholesale prices” and “centralize warehousing and distribution.” These assertions collapse upon the slightest scrutiny.

New York City’s government does not have a secret stash of large, empty, retail-ready ground-floor spaces conveniently located along major pedestrian and transit corridors. Indeed, the city regularly rents real estate, including retail-style space, from private owners.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The New York Times (paywall)

______________________

Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Nicole is the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Caravailable now.

Photo by Isabel Pavia/Getty Images