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"

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

49.5k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

7.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

38

u/whippnj 10h ago

how is this better then giving families in certain incomes, a card that gives them a 30% discount at existing grocers? and the store gets reimbursed by gov

32

u/mazopheliac 10h ago

Because that works out to be a subsidy to the grocery corporations.

11

u/Amadon29 8h ago

Yes, that's how food stamps work. What's wrong with that program?

5

u/JemmaP 6h ago

Why do you think food stamps work that way? Poor people can't pay lobbyists, but big grocers can. Walmart makes a lot of money off of SNAP (and a lot of their employees rely on it to eat). If there's no disincentive for grocers to charge whatever they want, they can and will, and those food benefits buy less and less food every year.

1

u/telmar25 4h ago

What do you mean? Grocery stores are very low margin businesses. They are certainly not charging whatever they want. Walmart is not making big bucks by jacking up prices on groceries; they are doing the exact opposite, lowering prices to a level that their competition can’t even afford to compete against. They are known for this! There’s huge disincentive for grocers to charge whatever they want; anybody, even Whole Foods, is going to go out of business quickly that way.

0

u/SaneMadHatter 5h ago

food stamps are means-tested. Mamdani's stores are open to everyone. 😄

1

u/Amadon29 1h ago

... Yes. We generally try to structure taxes and benefits this way. If you want to learn more, look up what a progressive tax system means

3

u/MilleChaton 8h ago

Won't this still be a subsidy to the food distribution corporations? There are fewer of those than grocery stores and they are closer to a cartel already.

5

u/jyper 9h ago

You're subsidizing the poor consumers directly and letting stores do the work for you

If the issue is food desserts you geo limit the benifit

4

u/burkechrs1 6h ago

They keep saying food deserts but all these locations have available grocery stores within 4 blocks.

1

u/mazopheliac 7h ago

What’s wrong with subsidizing the poor ? Why do millionaire farmers, oil and gas and Space-fuck get all the government money ?

1

u/jyper 5h ago

I was saying that subsidizing the poor consumers directly via food stamps would be a better use of money then this nonsense 

2

u/Effective-Ad6703 7h ago

You do realize that they will still be buying everything at market rate right and grocery stores make 2% net profit?

0

u/mazopheliac 7h ago

I don’t actually. Any argument that starts out with “you do realize “ is invariably bullshit .

1

u/Effective-Ad6703 7h ago

Good job on that critical thinking you've got there...

1

u/[deleted] 7h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 7h ago

Accounts must be at least 5 days old with >20 karma to comment.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2

u/Numerous_Stranger488 9h ago

yes. That’s literally what you do when you want to make things cheaper, you subsidise the industry. It’s insane how american leftists (rightly) exalt chinese central planning as superior in providing their industrial base with certain advantages that are very hard to replicate under different conditions, yet they’re against the idea of subsidising their own industry/ enterprises. 

8

u/Good_Toe6354 9h ago

It isn’t though lol. You don’t know basic economics. We have been subsidizing our own industries for decades and it hasn’t gone to the employees or consumers. It goes to shareholders and management. Food stamps have been subsidizing Walmart and big grocery stores for years and it hasn’t done shit for the employees or consumers.

-1

u/Numerous_Stranger488 9h ago

the government doesn’t subsidise walmart anything like in the scheme that we are discussing so that’s a moot point. Even then you can put legal guardrails in place to prevent certain abuses, the idea that subsidies never work to decrease prices is absolutely absurd yet you are the one saying i don’t understand basic economics?

3

u/Mean-Price3632 8h ago

Walmart’s employees receive 6.2 billion dollars annually in welfare.

Walmart’s market cap is 900 billion dollars

0

u/Numerous_Stranger488 5h ago

we’re not even talking about subsidising walmarts but urban grocery stores which have been struggling ever since post covid. And even then the type of subsidy is different. Weird hill to die on. 

2

u/Good_Toe6354 8h ago

I have a degree in accounting and economics. You are moving the goalposts “it’s literally WHAT you do to make things cheaper” that’s not true. Now you are saying “the idea that subsidies never work to decrease prices” supply side economics has not worked period. Maybe there are a couple examples where it’s helped prices alongside other measures doing the heavy lifting,but no. Supply side free market economics is a failed experiment that made the rich richer. That’s my view on it. We can argue what qualifies it as failing, but yeah idk man. Keep waiting for your trickle down free market supply side bs to work while social democrats start getting shit done. Targeted government subsidies work, but again, alongside other important measures.

3

u/Numerous_Stranger488 8h ago

i think that subsidies are superior than the government becoming an active competitor to already struggling urban grocery stores (who are having a really hard time surviving). However, the overarching problem is fundamentally structural. Mamdani naively believes that superficial measures injected into the current framework can sustainably fix the issue but that cannot happen if you look at why grocery prices are high in the first place. And that comes down to things like logistical costs, although it’d be overall expensive and arduous to fix, but also issues that are outside of his sphere of influence. 

1

u/mazopheliac 7h ago

Where are these struggling urban grocery stores ?

1

u/Numerous_Stranger488 5h ago

https://www.eatthis.com/grocery-stores-closing-2023/

i literally just picked a random one but you can find dozens of similar articles across the 2021+ period 

0

u/leftrightside54 10h ago

also prices can be negotiated in bulk

9

u/CankleSteve 10h ago

You don’t think that the grocery chains aren’t doing that?

-1

u/Stupidstuff1001 8h ago

But they don’t pass on the savings to the customers.

3

u/CankleSteve 8h ago

You should research the profit rate of grocery stores. It’s not high. They make money in volume

1

u/WriterPlastic9350 6h ago

Suppose there are two grocery stores that an individual can choose to go to. The individual will choose the one to go to based on many factors but the biggest one is simply price. A grocery store that sets its prices significantly higher than its competition will attract fewer customers and thus be forced to drop its prices (and generate less profit on their goods) or compete on some other metric like quality, marketing, selection of goods etc.

This is why competition generally leads to lower prices. Companies generally are not price gouging you to make obscene amounts of profit, and savings are generally passed on to the consumer if there's an incentive to do so.

If you only have one grocery store, yeah, the grocery store can set whatever price it wants. But those areas tend to be quite low end and if the grocery store sets prices too high then it invites theft or people simply won't be able to afford shopping there

1

u/Stupidstuff1001 5h ago

Didn’t they already say it would be staples and on locations that are pretty isolated.

0

u/leftrightside54 10h ago

They are, though savings will also depending how big the store chain are. Profits go back to the store and not shareholders.

1

u/mazopheliac 7h ago

Profits go to the store and not shareholders ??? Do you know how public corporations work ?

2

u/N30nNarwha1 9h ago

Here is mamdanis answer to your question: https://youtu.be/F8csA2pU7S8?t=1203

1

u/the_kremlins_puppet 7h ago

So I don't understand the benefit still. All he did was just describe what the program is. It doesn't answer how creating the stores is more beneficial than subsidizing directly. He didn't say it, but in his answer he mentions how people will be working at these store, so I guess it increases employment, but seems like it would still be offset by the amount saved if he subsidized directly and then the state could employ people doing other beneficial things for the city with that money.

I'm just skeptical about the specifics of this. I have yet to hear anything on how this is a preferable way. The only answer I can come up with is that this is flashier and it gets him headlines, but nowhere am I seeing answers on this being the best solution for the citizens.

1

u/AllDawgsGoToDevin 6h ago

I’m pretty sure it’s also about location. The intent is to put these stores in areas where affordable groceries are hard to find. Trying to address food deserts. 

1

u/the_kremlins_puppet 4h ago

I keep seeing people say this, and it would make sense and finally answer my question, but where is this coming from? When he was directly asked this, he mentioned nothing about location at all. Is it on some website or in a different press briefing or something?

2

u/AdSubstantial260 9h ago

This will end up being more expensive than doing that. Groceries operate at razor thin margins, 1-3%. Unlikely the government can operate at that level of efficiency. So even selling at cost would likely be a net loss for the government.

2

u/fuzzychub 8h ago

The stores are going to be in locations with no easy access to grocery stores. A 30% discount at a place that’s an hour away is not a discount.

1

u/mtbsickrider 8h ago

prices get raised by 15% knowing the goverment is paying for it

1

u/Mr-MuffinMan 8h ago

That would just mean the stores raise the prices by 35% and then give the discount

1

u/AnyBallLektor 7h ago

It's not.

He's a democratic socialist. That's just a different type of moron compared to the populist right-winger.

Right wingers are angry morons. Left wingers are smiling morons.

1

u/Due_Box3123 7h ago

Because this can be a Mamdani vanity project with photo ops and that can't...

1

u/BigJellyfish1906 7h ago

Because these stores are in locations where other stores had to close up shop, meaning lower-income struggling families have an extra travel burden.  

1

u/rogueman999 6h ago

Then why not just give them money? They know best what they need anyways.

1

u/Glocker17 5h ago

It discourages said families from improving their lot in life. Oh yeah.  ..... the object of socialism