Mamdani’s Supermarket Sweep: Soviet Edition

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, has now decided that the time has come: At long last, he’s going to put into action his Soviet plan for a government-run grocery store.

Are you excited about government-run grocery stores?

It’s going to be just great, because if there’s one thing that we have to fight off in America, it is starvation.

I know you’re thinking right now that we actually have a massive obesity problem in the United States. You’d be right.

But according to Mamdani, the biggest problem in America is that people cannot afford food, and the best way to make food affordable is for the government to open grocery stores.

This has never been tried anywhere.

Except for Cuba, the USSR, and most communist countries.

That led, of course, to the very famous photos of Soviet leadership walking into American supermarkets and being astonished by the selection of products. Capitalism makes things better, cheaper, and more plentiful, which is how they become better and cheaper.

Mamdani explained: “This store will be open in 2029. The reason that we’re announcing it first is because unlike other stores, this will be built from the ground up. We are talking about a vacant lot that is about one or two blocks over there that is currently lying vacant. It is city-owned. We’re going to build it from the ground up.”

Just wow.

By the way, how much is it going to cost to build this grocery store from the ground up? According to the New York Times, $30 million.

$30 million.

I have a question. Do you think that when Publix builds a new store, it costs them $30 million?

Nope.

If the city subsidizes particular food products at a cheaper rate, either people will want to buy those food products or they will not. If they like eggs, for example, there will be a run on eggs, and then a shortage.

That’s what will happen, because when you subsidize the price of a product, it spurs more demand, and you will end up with a shortage — and longer lines.

Duh.

It is amazing how no one has ever read a book or even watched an old documentary.

Mamdani says he wants the new grocery store to offer discounts on basic groceries and to provide quality jobs. The city will waive rent and real estate taxes for the store.

If you really wanted to lower food prices, you could do that for all the grocery stores in New York. That would lower some prices.

But you know what else you could do? You could get rid of all of the regulations surrounding the grocery stores in New York, which make it very difficult to run and operate a business.

It’s hilarious that the minute the Democrats want to lower prices, they give a specific cut-out that gets rid of all of the government red tape, but just for their friends, like the government-run grocery store.

Meanwhile, Congressman Ro Khanna, the West Coast version of Zohran Mamdani, wants free everything. He called for free health care and free college.

There’s no such thing as free. There’s just stuff paid for by someone else.

“The moment has finally come for national health insurance,” Khanna declared. “Why? Because people now realize you cannot have health care linked to your job. Not at a time where your job may change or where you may lose your job. We need Medicare for all. That’s a better system with better outcomes, where health care is guaranteed to every single person from the day they are born. For our young people, where a short career opportunity is not limited by your family’s wealth, we need free college and free trade schools.” 

Free everything. How could that go wrong?

Maybe we can heavily subsidize everybody going to college. That won’t raise the price of — oh, it turns out that that radically raised the price of college.

Perhaps we could have more government subsidization of health care. That won’t raise the price of health care.

Whoops. That raises the price because it increases the base that people are willing to pay and are able to pay.

It doesn’t matter what the effect is.

The only thing that matters to the Democrats is that it feels good when they say the word “free” over and over and over again.