JONATHAN TURLEY: Mamdani’s grocery stores will be the most expensive markets in NYC — paid for by you, the taxpayer.
Rather than deliver discount groceries, Mamdani is selling New Yorkers a bill of goods that will cost them millions.
It is not a description of a competitive grocery but a public charity. It is a quasi-food bank where taxpayers subsidize the cost.
As usual, Mamdani turns this into a class war, demonizing business owners. He suggests that real grocery stores are simply price gougers hoarding windfall profits from consumers. He ignores that they must pay rent, upkeep and fees — all things the city-run stores may simply write off.
He proclaimed, “May the most affordable grocery store win.”
Of course, the test is not which grocery is the most affordable, but which is the most sustainable. If you are willing to take a bath on sales, you can always offer the most affordable prices for as long as your excess cash holds out.
The first city-run grocery, in East Harlem, will cost $30 million to build — and perhaps more. It will never need to pay this money back nor factor it into its prices. The “warmth of socialism” will cover it; that is, you.
In reality, Mamdani will be selling apples at a far greater cost than any competitor, but those true costs will be buried in the city budget and paid for by the taxpayers.
There’s a new word for net taxpayers who stay in New York: Suckers.
Previously: Begun, the Class War Has.
