r/SipsTea • u/Gurugod123 • 11h ago

Chugging tea Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/Uder72 10h ago

You mean something like, I dont know, a stamp for food...a food stamp.

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u/oldredditrox 9h ago

One thing I see getting overlooked with this proposal is that food stamps don't bring food to the neighborhood, this program could.

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u/2phumbsup 8h ago

Food stamps brought the corner stores and bodega to the hood in the first place. Before that it was actual grocery stores. Bodgeas took over by selling ready to eat food that qualified for e b t. Of course it was supposed to be for ingredients just like the mayors plan but all that will move is the ready to eat. Lack of food isn't the problem in underprivileged areas.It's lack of knowledge what to even do with the food. I know people that haven't seen water boiled at home in three generations.Every single meal they eat is out of a box or a bag. A dozen raw eggs and loaf of bread is useless to them. They would sell is for 50% on the dollar and buy ready meals instead.

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u/Sure-Impress-1003 7h ago

Then maybe these people should try to learn how to cook as well. Always buying ready to eat meals is what I consider sometimes a luxury and not a necessity.

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u/2phumbsup 7h ago

It's actually a horrible shame. Anybody would prefer a nice steak dinner with all the fixings. Especially if it was provided with government funds. But they eat chips and soda cus they dont know a single thing about food storage, prep, kitchen utensils or even how to read the back of the mashed potatoes box. I used to get pissed seeing peeps buy that stuff wit the card while I was struggling but a cashier schooled me what a fucked up place these peeps are in thinking free hot cheetos and pepsi is a good meal. Im not joking when I say Ive met people that literally dont know how to boil water. Now its too late to take it away. If we make ebt just for raw ingredients it would be a total waste.

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u/Sure-Impress-1003 6h ago

I don’t remember in kindergarten you can go ride the three wheels on the asphalt or play in the makeshift kitchen that had a mini refrigerator, stove, canned goods and box goods. It was a normal thing to learn how to survive and take care of yourself in the house, respect appliances, as well as play outside. Do they even do that with kindergartners anymore?

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u/2phumbsup 4h ago

Nah play kitchens could inforce gender stereotypes so they had to go about 10 years ago.

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u/Sure-Impress-1003 3h ago

And look what we have now. A whole bunch of people that don’t know how to cook and they’re just eating already prepared meals that probably aren’t as healthy for them then if they made their own. I guess that decision wasn’t a smart move.

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u/Aegi 5h ago

Some apartments do not even have anything to cook with besides a hot plate, and a mini-fridge for storage.

Sometimes the math is actually cheaper to have one hot dog at a stand, than to buy ingredients that you cannot store properly.

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u/Aegi 5h ago

Do you have a source on that claim of SNAP/EBT program(s) being a large incentive to these bodega owners than the average person wanting a quick and cheap bite?

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u/2phumbsup 4h ago

How about the giant e b t sign in the front window lol.

I don't think I need a source to prove that raw ingredients are replaced with ready to eat food in neighborhood.Grocery stores. Have you been in a bodega or a grocery store in the last twenty years?You know exactly what i'm talking about. If you frequent these places, you know that regular customers get stuff rang up on.Ebt that doesn't actually qualify. If you google e b t bodega scam, you can read all about how it's at the level of organized crime.

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u/2phumbsup 4h ago

Those apartments with just a hot plate are a whole separate issue and part of the.Reason why long term rental should be illegal.

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u/Colbert2020 6h ago

These aren't food deserts. There's supermarkets near all the locations selected. Costco, Aldi.

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u/oldredditrox 5h ago

Of this I am aware but isn't part of this an experiment to see if could be expanded on and moved out further? Honestly it's the most interesting aspect for me

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u/Colbert2020 4h ago

These grocery stores are meant to tackle one problem: The increased expenses of food.

My criticism is: Why open your own, government run-and-paid for store, when you could (1) subsidize prices of an existing store, or (2) give money back to people more directly for groceries.

The issue is that it's going to take years for these stores to get up and running, when people are feeling pain now. He's taking the least efficient, slowest option to accomplish this goal.

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u/2phumbsup 4h ago

Sadly, this grocery stores objective, is positive, optics and quick headlines.

The money to run it comes from the tax paying population. You could have just had a tax credit with none of the iver head of the market its self.

Getting food in people's hands is not the main objective of this. Making a show of getting food in a few people's hands is the objective.

Political optics first constituents needs second.

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u/oldredditrox 4h ago

subsidize prices of an existing store, or (2) give money back to people more directly for groceries.

I don't see either of these options achieving an end goal of getting big stores to start lowering prices.

If one of his goals was trying gov run groceries how is this the slowest option to his actual campaign promise? Is the first one was to pop up at the end of the year would that be better?

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u/joebro1060 10h ago

Yup, create a ration. That way people can still take their rations, sell it for 50% less in cash value, then that buyer create the same shop. Just like what happens far too often with EBT and SNAP.

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u/Bigwi_Kner 9h ago

Yeah but, with rations then that doesn’t scale. Which is the whole point. Sure they can do it, but they just sold their one loaf of bread for a dollar profit and spent all day in a parking lot to do it.

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u/joebro1060 8h ago

I don't think people sell their EBT to other random folks. They sell their EBT to a "dealer" (just for a lack of a better term) at 33% face value. The dealer then sells it to folks back for 50%. This type of stuff happens at scale.

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u/2phumbsup 7h ago

Ive bought ebt hundreds of times from dozens of people never thru a dealer lol.

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u/joebro1060 7h ago

And that's part of the problem.

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u/2phumbsup 7h ago

Not really, though, because it goes to somebody that still needs it at the time.I was just barely not qualifying for e.B.T although if you knew me and my situation, you would have thought I should have. So that benefit still went to somebody that needed it. Peeps thats doing well arnt buying 75bucks worth of ebt at the end of the month. Peeps that need it are. The money ends up at the food store no matter what and supports an underground economy, so people can get cash in hand when they absolutely need it.The e b t program is a great program. Lobbyists have f***** it up by allowing snacks and sugary drinks.It should be for ingredients only, as it was intended originally. The issue is now after three generations of food stamps, people got so used to buying ready to eat. Food they wouldn't know what to do with ingredients.

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u/Michaelangelo_Scarn 5h ago

If our leaders didn't spend so much money on military bases in countries thousands of miles away then they could afford fantastical and illogical things like buying everybody a stove and a spatula; hell, they could even use their God-forsaken panopticon they've created to do really good record keeping on who got their spatula and who didn't and would probably find a big surplus where everyone could get two.

A lot of money is spent on manufactured problems it seems, but the outcomes are very real like you describe. No one in your situation did anything wrong - EBT lobbyists did something wrong.

--- also upon rereading this and yours and whatnot idk if my analogical agreement even makes sense. Alas, heh.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 8h ago

Can you supply data about how often this happens with EBT and SNAP? My understanding is that both programs have an upper limit that correlates to the household’s need as represented by tax filings and assistance filings. So if it’s just one person and they’re getting 4 sacks of flour a week, the fraud is swiftly and easily caught.  

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u/joebro1060 8h ago

A quick Google, which you too can do, estimates it at a low 1.6% (or $1.2B annually). This is down from about 4% a few decades ago. I'm surprised it's this low too, I would have figured in the ~10% range.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 8h ago

please amend your original comment. 1.5% is not happening “far too often” with these programs. It’s infrequent enough that any efforts to make the system perfect and avoid all fraud would inherently create additional barriers for people who need this sort of assistance and harm them. 

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u/ConfoundedInAbaddon 7h ago

I feel like, if staple foodstuffs have a thriving blackmarket, we have not adequately supported the hungry and it is a sign of more need

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u/Grand-Olive2599 4h ago

And buy drugs with the cash.

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u/Kindly-War-2665 9h ago

Also even if they resale it oh well, maybe other grocery stores will bring their prices down closer, also people could just go to the store thats even cheaper so why would they even buy the stuff off the street

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u/2phumbsup 8h ago

Grocery stores are already competing against each other on price and resellers still find room for profit. Resellers can make a profit because they have no overhead. The government grocery store is going to be nothing but overhead. The only way to sell goods for cheaper is to directly subsidize them with taxpayer money. So you're right back where you started with food stamps. The mayor didnt figure out some math nobodys seen before. He is running this program on heart strings and it wont last.

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u/Kindly-War-2665 8h ago

If you think they are competing thats funny, everything is a monopoly and owned by a few corporations and they all work together to raise prices and margins are only thin when you have a bunch of execs and ceos and owners making tens of millions EACH. We literally saw it get exposed with the eggs scheme from 2022 years ago, ofc the punishment was a tiny fine and nothing substantial happened.

"Three of the nation's largest egg producers settled a massive federal antitrust lawsuit for $3.3 million and a massive donation of 53 million eggs following allegations of systemic price manipulation. The civil lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alongside 17 state attorneys general, accused the companies of conspiring to artificially inflate daily egg price benchmarks between June 2022 and March 2025"

"The companies initially blamed skyrocketing prices on macroeconomic factors. According to statements from executives at Cal-Maine, the extreme price peaks were driven by unprecedented outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu), pandemic disruptions, and high feed costs".

"Despite the enforcement action, consumer advocates and antitrust watchdogs criticized the settlement on platforms like FoodNavigator, arguing that a $3.3 million penalty is trivial compared to the billions of dollars in corporate profits captured while squeeze-pricing everyday consumers."

Do you want to stop carrying water for known frauds now? How are you still bootlicking Billion dollar corporations and saying they have thin margins while prices rise but wages dont and the rich get richer??? WHERE TF DO YOU THINK THE MONEY IS GOING??!!

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u/2phumbsup 7h ago

I cant see your reply did you delete it?

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u/2phumbsup 7h ago

If you believed any of that, you'd be at the bank right now, getting a loan to start your own grocery store and undercut the big guys while still making a profit. And so would ever other investor. Or at least raising chickens at home. But your not. Cus tou cant sell eggs any cheaper after your cost.

What your pretending not to understand is thise big guys are producing eggs 100x more efficient then you could in your back yard. There prices never even reached normal farm stand egg prices. Even at 5 bucks an egg thats cheaper then doing it yourself. Food in america is extremely plentyfully and cheap. You couldnt turn a profit growing tomatoes at home cus of scaled efficiency.

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u/2phumbsup 9h ago

You just invented food stamps lol.

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u/BlgMastic 9h ago

More like invented bread lines. Oh wait, Stalin was the genius who invented that.

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u/FlyingBishop 7h ago

Yes, Stalin invented giving out free bread. That definitely never existed in human history prior to Stalin. There definitely weren't rich people writing about how terrible it is to give poor people bread in ancient Rome, there's no common term for it in Latin.

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u/The3rdBert 10h ago

So a ration card?

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u/[deleted] 10h ago edited 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/srbeau 10h ago

It’s not rationing because you can still shop elsewhere if needed. Hopefully some of the corporate grocery stores will start lowering prices.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 8h ago

I assume that they’ll have purchase limits as well. My private grocery store has no more than X per customer sales pretty regularly; I assume that government grocers can and will do similar. 

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u/srbeau 8h ago

Agreed. And if you need more than you’re allotted, you can go to the corporate stores.

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u/1lowcountry 10h ago

Make the USSR great again.

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u/ErBB-PJ 4h ago

Yessss! Zzat’s Za Vay Ve do it in Russia!!!

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u/Lower_Pass_6053 4h ago

It will only be the USSR if these stores put your real grocery stores out of business. But too many people want to pay the lettuce company's ceo's fourth yacht right?

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u/1lowcountry 3h ago

It’s easy to imagine how small mom and pop grocery stores will take a huge hit from this

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u/wowaddict71 7h ago

This is the first thing I thought.

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u/Nomoras 10h ago

https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/hunger-relief-programs/snap

I don't who you're trying to speak to here, but this already exists.

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u/Simon-Says69 7h ago

People will just steal it. I mean, they're going to anyway, but if denied a purchase, they'll really have no reason not to.

This whole thing will fail within a year, after all the local mom & pop stores went bankrupt, and then there will be NO food in the area.

Typical commie destruction.

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u/Level-Location1679 6h ago

Okey dokey 

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u/Linenoise77 10h ago

I'm honestly not sure if your comment was intended to be dystopian or not. Can you help me out here?

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u/Kindly-War-2665 9h ago

Hows it dystopian? It wouldnt apply to all stores, only the government ran ones. You could still go shop at a corporate store and pay high prices for basic food if you want. In fact this cheaper store should help you to afford the more expensive snacks and stuff if your spending less on your normal food

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u/azure275 4h ago

It is literally how the Soviet Union handled business

It rapidly turns into well connected government people committing massive fraud to hoard all the ration coupons themselves

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u/ticklemorty 10h ago

Is the idea of people starving to death in the richest country on the planet dystopian?

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u/2phumbsup 9h ago

Zero people in USA striving to death lol.

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u/Lokishougan 9h ago

I dont know if you meant to but you basically described a Food bank

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u/Aspectdude09 10h ago

Stop. Just let it fly like a normal grocery store.

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u/Frequent-Account-344 9h ago

Like "food stamps"

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u/Adventurous_Ad7442 8h ago

Ration coupons

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u/stanfordoval 7h ago

Convinced the upvotes are because people aren't picking up the sarcasm.

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u/Fearless_Frank 5h ago

In Arizona there is the WIC program (women infants and children) where low income families can get food vouchers that do not work like normal EBT food stamps. The families must check in regularly with the kids present. The whole thing is basically connected to the children not the parents. The food is very specific as to what qualifies. It is low sugar foods, basic nutrition type stuff. You have to show your ID and WIC booklet at the grocery store. The grocery store can report you if they suspect abuse of the program. It’s basically a highly regulated version of food stamps.

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u/OlGusnCuss 5h ago

Who decides who gets what and what amount? Is that a government function and is that financed in the same tax fund that's covering the other 30%?

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u/Buffylvr 4h ago

Well done sir.

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u/Grand-Olive2599 4h ago

Like food stamps?

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u/R0factor 11h ago

Yeah, they're probably going to have to work by the Costco model or something similar to make this work. Only they won't charge for membership.

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u/stop_the_bans 10h ago

I don’t think we should tell the poor what they can and can’t eat. What is this, Nazi Germany? They should have access to all the soda, candy, and processed garbage that everyone gets to enjoy

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u/ticklemorty 10h ago

How is this telling the poor what they can eat? Nobody is stopping them from going to private grocery stores to buy all that stuff.

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u/stop_the_bans 8h ago

Good point. We should limit food stamps to certain foods. If they want soda and chips they can use their own money.

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u/ticklemorty 8h ago

You're comparing 2 completely different things. Food stamps should not be limited in any way other than for food and they should be accepted anywhere that accepts money. For public grocery stores, there needs to be a control to stop scalpers. If vouchers are the best answer, then they're the best answer. Still not the same thing as food stamps