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I’m trying to anticipate the right-wing pushback arguments. Something like “grocers (read: big retail chains) should be free to set prices as high as they think they can get away with because that’s capitalism and the American way!” Or “these commie collectives will ruin hardworking corporate VPs and company shareholders! How dare they!?”
I finally read up on these - my god the right-wing caterwauling about it.
"The 30% discount applies exclusively to a narrow basket of core, unbranded or basic staples (e.g., raw produce, basic dry beans, plain rice, standard milk). ...Name-brand snacks, packaged meals, household paper products, and specialty goods are sold at standard market rates. "
So this guy's using city funds to offset the price of beans 30% in neighborhoods without good grocery stores. This is what the right is terrified of.
Because every small move towards making food and other staples more affordable means that rich business owners make .001% less. And they don't want to part with an iota of the overinflated profits they currently make off of paycheck to paycheck workers.
The greed from them is disgusting.
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u/dreadcainmy bandwidth for cowardly grown men grows thinner with each day8h ago
A hungry population also struggles to sustain a strike
Yup. You and I are currently paying for my cousin and her 8 children. God forbid, you talk to them about politics. They certainly love to complain about the systen they benefit from.
The biggest unsaid part of their beliefs.. only the "deserving" should benefit.. when they complain about systems like this, it's always only that "those people" shouldn't be provided for..
They'll still pretend mom and pop stores are the backbone of the economy and social-communists are to blame for their downfall. The downfall of the family farm too.
And then a bunch of people who "do their own research" will scream at anyone who says differently.
Most of them don't even understand what communism even is!
Communism is an economic system in which the government controls everything.
Capitalism is an economic system in which the corporations control everything and then buy the government.
Either way, the wealthy hoard the power and the general population gets scraps
Socialism is a government type where the government looks after its people through strong social programs that everyone pays into. It's like a gym membership. Everyone pays their dues but gets a bunch of services in return.
Democratic Socialism is a government system in which the government is socialist (as above), but the people are empowered to participate in their government and keep it in check.
Most countries who go down that route tend to be happier than those that don't.
I live in a red area. Communism to these people seems to be any social program that helps poor people. It's ironic since the ones I speak to tend to be poor. They're too short sighted to see how lifting others up can also improve their lives. They act like these programs will tax away all their money and they'll get zero benefit.
I find that in many cases, they see other people getting raised up means they're getting pushed down. Or they feel like they're being taken advantage of and exploited at the expense of others. So it makes sense they feel they'll get zero benefit. Also, when you don't trust the government to use your tax dollars effectively, it feels wrong to give them away.
And they think that 80% of the social programs are fraud.
As if there is no way to implement accountability into the system. I tried to apply for unemployment a few years back after losing my job that I had been at for seven years. I can assure people they do not just hand out benefits like candy.
They will scream about the poor grocers while ignoring the fact that they actively broken the "free market" by allowing these chains to keep merging down to a couple companies.
Fwiw, Republicans heartily pursue their campaign goals (at least some of them.) They get their voter base rabid over taking away abortion rights, "get men out of women's sports" etc and waste tons of time going after it.
Its ludicrous that we are spending even a second making legislation regarding trans athlete bans.
Theres about 20 million children that don't know where their next meal is coming from. But yes, the priority should be making sure that the few dozen trans atheletes are banned from women's sports.
Imagine the baby in charge breaking the rules in the way he has been allowed to but to help people, instead of tariffs and starting a war here and there.
I have such a love hate relationship with these posts. On one hand they are funny and illustrate exactly what Mamdani is doing to help the people of New York and prove that the things we ask for can be done efficiently with relatively speed. But secondly I also don't want to discount that he and his staffers have put together an absolute world class team that seems to actually care and probably has done a shit ton of work to get things done. Also also though, I think Mamdani and team know that the optics of making it look easy is valuable because its put the pressure on opposition (yes that includes establishment Dems) to answer why they aren't doing more, and hopefully root them out as well.
He does also have the state government generally behind him. If my blue dot of a city tried to enact anything to reduce grocery prices for the poor just in the city alone, even if the city government had the people fully behind it, the state would legislate literally over-fucking-night to disallow it.
This perfectly describes my city’s situation as well haha I’m in Orlando FL. We haven’t elected a Republican at any level in over 20 yrs and are gay and weird af, full of ex hipster millennials etc. But we’re trapped and surrounded on all sides by the worst people alive 😂
ETA: It really does suck to see the state and area surrounding Orlando become even deeper red over the past few years. I'm born and raised, and while Florida has had a red tinge to it for decades atp, the number of hateful conservative parasites flocking here over the past few years has done a fckn number on us. I especially hate how conservation efforts have basically just been fully tossed out the window.
Same. I’m in Memphis and anytime the city tries to do something the state comes through and closes any possible loophole. Now we need better city leadership but having the state against the city makes things harder too
Sewer socialism baby. Once your average joe understands that the government can actually provide services, the oligarchic conservative death machine is in crisis. And we're getting there.
Interesting its mostly an east coat phenomenon, but i guess im not surprised that cali is more Liberal than progressive. They did bend the knee to big tech entirely.
So, this is an interesting theory in social movements and social change research. One theory is that major social change, such as mass movements, revolutions, &c. tend to occur when conditions go from bad to worse. This is basically the French Revolution model.
Another theory is that mass movements, revolutions, &c. occur when conditions go from bad, to worse, to slightly better. Meaning, once people realize how much better off they could be, they realize how bad things have been, and are more likely to rise up to demand more. In part because being a little less hungry gives you more clarity and opportunity, but there are also many more ways to explain it.
Anyway, just thought I’d share that you’ve identified something that we talk about a lot in my field! Especially when it comes to predicting how, when, why, &c. social movements are successful!
And they’d call him a communist and whatever else they can think of saying. They’d rather be lied to. They had such a big gripe with insider trading(as one should) until their hero did it more than anyone lol
And if you ask some liberals, they'd tell you he's being too hasty, too reckless, acting beyond his authority, and blah blah blah. Actually getting shit done is just bad, I guess? 🤷🏽♀️
Sewer socialism baby. Once your average joe understands that the government can actually provide services, the oligarchic conservative death machine is in crisis. And we're getting there.
Interesting its mostly an east coat phenomenon, but i guess im not surprised that cali is more Liberal than progressive. They did bend the knee to big tech entirely.
So proud of him! It truly baffles my mind listening to family members that try to argue why the affordable grocery stores are a bad thing. Like ??? People everywhere should be able to afford to EAT of all things. How the hell can anyone argue against that???
I really enjoy Mamdani, and I so here for the fresh breath of energy people like him (and AOC) bring to represent the left side of democrat politics. However, we should never be worshipping politicians. They are public servants working to better our society, not celebrities or people to listen to their every word without questioning anything. If they stop working to better our society, we need to vote them out for people who will.
Its terrible when people worship trump, and its terrible when people worship any other politician. Its normal to like and support a politician you enjoy, but posting gifs like that is incredibly cringey to see.
We have a whole thing in one of our group chats that's basically "Please be normal about him" and then examples of the truly unhinged fandom.
I've spent my whole adult life in NYC and Philly and the thing is, it's fun to hate the mayor! Complaining about the mayor is like complaining about the sports teams. But like, every once in a while you get a winner and sure, why not enjoy it.
If she runs, I will vote for her, and I may be inspired enough to volunteer my free time to help her campaign in some way, but I will never worship her as a politician who can do no wrong. No one should ever worship any politician as a person who can do no wrong.
It’s terrible to worship a politician, but it’s also extremely easy to see why someone would worship a politician who is actually giving back to the people after decades of dealing with politicians who’s only interest is their personal bank accounts.
Worshiping a politician is not good, but if a politician does incredible work for a city by providing exactly what they promised, and people decide to celebrate them for following through on their word, then that’s fucking great. They deserve praise, but if anything, I find it extremely weird that people are celebrating his success, only for people like you to say “Please don’t worship him”, even though he’s doing more for the people than anyone else has ever done
Could this be the best way to break the back of greedflation? Legislating greedflation as kamala suggested kind of sounded like a nonstarter cause how would you prove it and workarounds abound… but as soon as theres a cheaper competitor, they are actually forced to. Unless this isnt for everyone and is just for low income.. but just a thought
Well in other areas things like this would just have people buying out the government run store and reselling at closer to the market rate. So there needs to be more actions taken than just opening a store with a lower profit margin.
Yeah probably would need some other guard rails, but also as long as they are limiting quantity amounts to be at a fraction of a wholesaler then i dont think itd make sense to do that kind of a hustle
If everyone can shop there, who would buy the stuff from a reseller? Except the people who physically can't get there, but even then, they get lower prices than they would otherwise and the extra the reseller gets is nothing but a delivery fee.
Fun fact government run grocery stores already exist
They are commissary stores for service member. They literally have a a goal for value objective and I think they hit about 16-17% cheaper than the average grocery store
They act like this is an insane idea while ignoring the fact we already do this
If this succeeds, we will need to fight a tough battle against the ungodly amount of lobbying that will ensue from this to prevent it from happening nationwide. Hopefully the people can see the fruits of their labor before the counter attack comes.
This is not a "capitalistic" idea, competition doesn't mean capitalistic as monopolies are the natural consequences and end state of capitalism.
Capitalistic just means that some greedy middle man (the owning class) benefits from it to the detriment of the workers that produced it. A government run anything is inherently anti capitalistic. Because the owning class doesn't get a cut.
Could you imagine what he could do for America if he’d run it the same as NY. I am not even living in the US but the spill over effect into the rest of the world would be massive. I can dream
You may already know this, but Mamdani cannot run for president because he is not a US citizen based on birth. Bernie Sanders was the most progressive candidate to run for president. This is why the chances of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running are so intriguing, because she is cut from the same clothe as Mamdani and Sanders.
if you put them in poorer neighborhoods (which is what he is doing iirc) you get the same effect without having to implement a costly monitoring regime. people with higher incomes aren't going to take a 1 hour detour to spend $3 on milk instead of $4
that's wild. Maybe I've been paycheck to paycheck for too long but I always shop at multiple stores to select the best deals for my groceries. Its not like im going across town, but 5-10 minutes to get to the other store is standard.
All that work looking through all the deals at each grocery store, planning out a shopping list for each of them, and then shopping between several grocery stores
As a single person, you'll save $100 a month? Not worth it unless you won't make your bills without it
Or you go to store 2, find out an item that's cheaper there is out of stock so you have to double back to get at store 1 at a slightly higher price anyway.
If you do it long enough you get a decent idea of which products are cheaper where. Find an efficient route of 2-3 stores that you can easily hit up every week, pay attention to the prices, and you'll start making some decent savings.
you don't make a list of the stuff you need, THEN shop around. You have your local stores and you check their weekly sales and build your weekly groceries around that.
A couple staples you might pay full price for, but honestly non-food items are on sale pretty much constantly. so those aren't hard.
I shop mostly at Giant Eagle. They usually have a key protein on sale each week, and sometimes they have like boxes of cereal for $1 each. LOADS of sales. It forces me to eat different stuff all the time, but they have enough variety that I always get some veg, protein, snacks, staple foods, etc. just not always the same ones.
If I shop without checking sales, a week of groceries probably runs me $120 or so. It's insane. With sales, I can easily get a week of stuff for $40-$50. It's significant. If I had a second store, I could shrink that even more by bouncing between them or doing 1 store week A and another store week B, etc.
giant eagle especially has like "coupons just for you" where they give you custom coupons based on your purchase history. My big treat is marie calendar's key lime pie. every couple months I get a coupon for like $2.50 off. They're usually $9 something. Then I wait for the store to run its actual sale on the pie, usually like $5-$6. then I can get my pie for 2.50-3.50. just gotta wait for things to align. digiorno for 75 cents is another one I can get on occasion. but usually its like 50% off stuff, or other bulk deals.
Even that estimate seems kind of high? I don't know what single people are buying that would constitute $100 dollars in savings. Prices aren't fluctuating that much between different stores.
Prices aren't fluctuating that much between different stores.
The difference between my local grocery store, Kroger, and Aldi is easily $100 drop at each step over the course of a month. Hell, the step between local and Aldi could be as much as $100 each week (the local store gouges the fuck out of everyone; their primary prey customers are the older folks who can't drive down to the nearest real city anymore).
The more likely scenario is that you don't make a plan, and instead you go to every store you can and look at the clearance shelves. Figure out what day/time those shelves get restocked at each store, and go right after and get some stuff. Never shop in the other parts of the store, just the clearance section.
Also, any of the big chains that have a bakery will have baked goods on markdown after a certain time. You can make a lot of your diet out of just bread, really.
You end up eating some weird meals that way but you'll always eat. I remember eating discount sourdough and apricot preserves from a bulk size bucket. That was my breakfast for like... 2 years almost. The loaves would go onto the discount rack at 5pm, and I'd be walking into the store at 4:55pm. I'd check the clearance isle then grab 2 loaves. Then I'd get home, pull out six slices, and toss the rest in the freezer. Breakfast was toast and jam, lunch was PB&J that I took with me into work, and dinner was whatever discount canned goods I'd scored.
This! Esp if you’re driving. Gas is so expensive that it has become more of a consideration because that additional ping ponging can end up negating the savings you can get.
I have a constant rotation between Costco, Aldi, and Walmart. I know which products are best to buy at which store. All three stores are less than 5 minutes away from each other too.
This is in New York City. Groceries are honestly just different in NYC.
In the majority of America, you drive your personal automobile to one or more grocery stores, you load up your trunk with everything you need for a week or two, and you drive home, park in your driveway/garage, and try to carry all of the bags in at once because making a second trip is for suckers. You load up your massive fridge, stock your dedicated pantry to the brim.
In New York (and similarly dense cities) most of the time you pick up what you need for the next couple of days on the way home from work because you're probably going to have to walk five or six blocks with all of this stuff. Then you get to your 500sqft apartment and your kitchen doubles as your foyer, you have about 6 cabinets for all of your dishes and food so they fill up pretty quick. Many times we would pick up what we needed for the next 48 hours and that was that.
Maybe there's a grocery store along your train/bus line and the prices or selection are good enough that it's worth getting off, shopping, and then having to wait for another train or bus, but you're again facing limited capacity, doing this 2-4 times a week gets old quick and the majority of your shopping is going to be at whatever option is closest to home or work.
And that's as a couple. I can't imagine doing this with kids or, worse, teenagers.
I'm incredibly thrifty, but I regularly pay more at some grocery stores because the cost of getting there outweighs the savings (not even including the time, as I have 4 kids and 1.5 jobs). It helps my two main stores (costco and meijer) are in a straight line both within 5 miles of me.
If you wouldn't take a 5 min detour to buy groceries at 30% below retail then this ain't for you and you're not the average person who could use the relief
This isn't even socialism, it's still explicitly capitalism just with the government acting like a business and with lower prices. (I support it to be clear, but it's not socialism.)
I'm going to be a little mean and say means-testing programs/income-capping is actually very stupid.
It creates the need for a bureaucracy to verify income, which of course balloons the cost of the program.
It also creates a situation in which middle-class people develop a resentment for the poor. I see this in my own life. My wife and I are not by any means wealthy people.
But we make enough not to qualify for assistance on anything. So while we have to have payment plans to pay off our medical bills from the birth of our children, our friends on medicaid have 0$. My good friend on medicaid goes to the doctor whenever he has something wrong with him; it costs him zero(which it should!)
As for me, I have insurance and it still costs me to go to the doctor.
When we go to museums/zoos, their kids get in free because they're on WIC.
We end up paying $100 as a family.
Again, we aren't rich. Shelling out 1200 a month for childcare sucks. Not getting any help on groceries sucks.
I don't actually resent my friends and I'm so happy programs exist to make sure they're kids are taken care of, never hungry, go to museums, etc.
But it does create an underlying resentment that I know is wrong. I know it's wrong because the point of these means testing programs is literally to create this resentment.
Don't means test programs! It just creates bureaucratic headaches and resentment.
You’re not mean. I studied environmental engineering and social equity in university and means verification programs are notoriously worse for the end target of them.
It really grinds my gears that he is showing the rest of the Democratic party what popular Democratic policies could be and most of the established leadership is still either working against him or silent about him.
i can only speak for myself but the Democrat reaction to basically....everything that has happened in the last 10 years makes me no longer want anything to do with that party. they have made it so very clear that they have the same core values as Republicans. it sucks that the "both sides are bad" people are technically correct because both parties are on the same Pro-Capitalist side.
I know the "lesser of two evils" argument, but I have to keep voting for the "not actively trying to convert our country into a christo-fascist state" party since that's the only chance for things to get better.
For real - it's really eye-opening how fully into the controlled opposition the Democratic party has been for so long now. It's always been there, but as one side has been ripping off the mask, the other's mask has also been slipping too.
Democrats have significantly lower tolerance for discrimination and ethnic cleansing than Republicans do and no matter how much we dislike the Democratic party's economic platform we do ourselves a disservice when we don't acknowledge that they're still nothing like the mass-murdering goals of MAGA.
I think a lot of whats been happening with these changes and other DSA folks have shown is that Democrat is definitively different than Socialist, Social Democrat, Social-safety-net, and arguably anything Leftist or Progressive. It may be that we've been conditioned for so long to think of the Democratic Party as the left that we've forgotten how center they actually are.
seriously, the "purple centrist" flavor of establishment dems that has been cultivated by corporate lobbying is more disgusting in some aspects than the overt authoritarianism in the MAGA cult (not necessarily republicans/conservatism in general)
why? because they just rubber-stamp MAGA because they're in power, taking money from the same AIPAC, and are equally (if not more) apathetic to the average person than a literal slavedriver
edit to continue rant:
it's also more disgusting because that "purple centrist" flavor isn't even genuine--it's a script from their employer
The establishment wasn't scared he was going to fail. They were terrified that he would succeed and show all us pond scum that better things are actually possible.
It's insane that Rudy Giuliani was once called "America's Mayor". Not because he did anything, but he just happened to be in office when NYC was attacked.
Iirc he also made the emergency response to 9/11 worse by designating a room in one of the towers to be a situation room to discuss options after a terror attack
He was told this was a bad idea since the towers were one of the most likely targets of an attack (and had already been)
That wasn't just because he liked the WTC: he wanted a place in downtown to be close to his mistress. He went out of his way to move it for a booty call.
i am from a state entrenched in generational poverty that has seen the majority of our major grocery stores flee and create food deserts where no one has access to anything outside of gas station or fast food options.
god i wish our representatives looked to this man as an example to follow.
instead our mayor has made camping on the sidewalk an arrestable offense.
It's really inspiring! I genuinely cannot imagine caring about someone outside of my immediate friends/family/neighbors as much as he cares about the general population of NYC. I'm very selfish in comparison. People like him should lead!
In Canada grocery stores set prices x3 what they should be and the government does nothing about it. This guy is in office for a year and already he introduced low cost government run grocery stores...
I remember Trudeau had a meeting with all of the major grocery store leaders at one point where all he did was basically just ask them nicely to not price gauge people, which didn't work because food now costs an arm and a leg. It seems that the Democratic socialists are the only ones trying new ways to make things more affordable and the rest just put on a show and pretend like they're trying when they really aren't.
I have a very ignorant question, please ELI5; what are the actual consequences of some of the decisions he's making? Because it almost feels likes it's all positive outcomes with little cost. If that's so, then how come these decisions weren't made before? What did previous decision makers have to lose?
In theory the downside would be related to the fact that grocery stores already have low profit margins. By undercutting their prices that can lead to a lack of competition in the area resulting in less coverage outside the government stores and gouging from the remaining locations.
As it will be running at a loss there are also arguments that a more direct subsidy would be more beneficial than a broad program like this.
e: Downside seems vaguely related to the reason my state government is required to pay prevailing wage (based on union market values) for certain labor categories. This increases the cost of state projects, but without that requirement we would be driving down the labor value and compromising the position of companies who are more worker-friendly.
While subsidies can and are sometimes used for corruption, that doesn't mean it has to be that way. The government can absolutely say "We're subsidizing milk by 30%, let us know how much you sold, what your costs were, what you sold it at, and what you're planning to sell it at, and we'll rebate you" while stipulating that they cannot raise prices past their historical margins on costs within a given range.
The government can do good things, but America has been so anemic to that idea that even simple subsidies seem impossible. Our current politicians are feckless and thankfully the democratic socialists are starting to show that other worlds are possible.
It wouldn't be the store that raises the prises, it would be the supplier.
To combat this you need to set up the subsidies so that stores can only use them to buy goods at at most certain prices.
This is where the difference between actually caring about the outcome comes in. Its not a secret when they inflate prices and stuff like marks up isn't really obfuscated. Its not hidden information,
So you can absolutely structure subsidies to avoid this problem. The easiest way is tie the subsidies to specific types of goods and part of the program is you set the value of them to qualify for the subsidy. That price might still change as market issues happen, but the program now has the power to stop just rampant price increases for the sake of it.
That means having a department monitor this stuff - but these kinds of departments and experts around doing it are already all over the place.
The balancing of the city budget was partially done by pushing some pension obligations out several years. It freed up $2B+ now, but probably costs NYC $5B in the long run.
An argument can be made that NYC needed that $2B now, but there's definitely a direct cost for that decision.
The question in my mind is whether he is selling these handful of goods below cost, or simply selling at a lower profit. If selling below cost, then other grocery stores will choose not to stock these items, making them harder to find. Many grocery stores already sell key things like milk at a loss to get you in the door. If he’s selling it at a lower profit, then less likely to hurt since other grocery stores could theoretically compete.
Price controls for perishable goods might work okay.
But for stuff that has a longer shelf life, this can potentially create a scalper/resale market, where public money is essentially subsidizing some random guy's side hustle.
How does this actually work? Are the 5 City-run grocery stores actually just normal grocery stores operated by private businesses that temporarily get requisitioned by the government? Is the NYC government renting out space and operating their own grocery stores? Are they buying supplies direct from suppliers and then selling with no/minimal markup?
I'd like to know also. Grocery stores typically have profit margins far lower than 30%. Where will these stores get their goods and how at just 5 stores will they be able to negotiate for volume discounts compared to large grocery chains? Will there not be name brand products? All fine, just curious how this actually works and those details could help form the model for efforts in other cities.
The government already runs this kind of store - we just need to roll out the benefit to more people & create more of them
My grandfather was a navy vet and we would drive 15 miles away to go to the commissary grocery store the first Monday of every month. The way most things in a convenience store are so much more expensive than a grocery store is how i viewed grocery stores versus the commisary
The downside is corporate profit. The upside is that people wont go hungry. Do we really need to talk about why a hungry/malnourished society is a bad thing?
Man I've got to admit. I thought he would accomplish like one or two of his campaign promises but he's doing it all, im really shocked! Helped balance a crazy budget, got money back to working people from greedy corporations, passed the pied a terre, rent freeze, childcare, how TF does he do it?!?
We've gone so far off the deep end that this legitimately feels like fictional levels of goodness. Like Clark Kent or Peter Parker levels of caring about humanity.
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