Longtime Friend & Reader Weetabix writes:
Given your history with grocery stores, do you have any thoughts on the Mamdani (Commie, Muslim) plan for government-run grocery stores (“public option”) in NYC?
I foresee:
– low prices because subsidized
– private stores and bodegas priced out of business
– “public option” stores lock everything up because of theft/vandalism
– public outrage at people’s unfair treatment due to what they brought on themselves
– “public option” stores close
– wailing and gnashing of teeth at the new “food desert”
…but, of course, I’m a cynic.
I have no thoughts other than Mr. Bix’s well-reasoned points — in fact, many thanks are due for saving me from having to think about the situation.
Every time Commies try this nonsense they encounter what we call “market experience”, and they call “greedy capitalism”. There are many such (as outlined above) but allow to address but one, that of prices.
You can’t sell anything at “cost” (i.e. what you paid for the merchandise as it arrives at the store, or F.O.B. — free on board — as usually stated). What that does is make your retail outlet a losing proposition (what’s nowadays referred to as “unsustainable”). This remains true even if the operating costs of the establishment (rent, utilities, equipment, salaries etc.) are wholly assumed by city government, as this Marxist asshole proposes. The drain on tax revenue will be horrendous, even for just the six stores — which by the way will also be denied the benefits of non-issued sales taxes under this loony scheme. And I haven’t even touched on the city’s subsidization of yet-lower prices, which will not only drain revenues but also increase demand. And speaking of which:
…ummm only six stores to cover the whole five boroughs of NYfC? Expect long queues and lengthy waits at the registers as the stores struggle to cope with the (unexpectedly) high demand — and high demand there will be in plenty because if they think that only the Pore&Starvin denizens of NYfC will attempt to avail themselves of these lower prices, they don’t know much about New York. [200 examples from personal experience omitted for reasons of brevity]
To use a not-so-long-ago example from Marxist establishments of, say, Soviet Russia (Moscow Version):
Whether the famously-impatient Noo Yawkers will stay as docile as their Moscow counterparts will be established on Day One of this Glorious Leap Forward — let me get out ahead of the thing by stating that there’ll be riots and rampant looting, you betcha.
But hey: never let it be said that I stood in the way of stupid people making stupid decisions and trying stupid experiments, especially when the victims of said stupidity actually voted for all that.
I look forward to Comrade Mamdani’s “new” initiatives (and their unexpected! outcomes) with great anticipation, as will Reader Weetabix and the rest of you.
Let the (Hunger) Games begin.
Hopefully Mamdani won’t pussyfoot around the way DeBlasio did. I want to see Directive 10-289 and reactionaries going to camps. Then maybe folks will start to get it.
go on NYC, grab a hold of that red hot stove and give it a deep long french kiss. what could possibly go wrong?
Time to stock up on beans, toilet paper and a shit ton of popcorn to watch this shit show unfolding in NYFC.
As someone pointed out the other day NYFC went from being the victims of muzzie terrorism twenty-five years ago to embracing it now.
You won’t see lines like in the old USSR, because the fifth guy in line will see that the store clerks are busy, and he’ll just grab his stuff and leave. That will cause the next two guys to do the same, and then the whole line will be running in and looting, because why should I pay if everybody else is just stealing the stuff? And that, of course, will result in fights (hopefully fistfights rather than gunfights) as sixteen guys want the last two cases of beer.
This, of course, will be the fault of capitalism, and the solution will be to lower prices, with the city raising taxes to make up the difference.
Rinse and repeat.
It would be a good time to open a small grocery store just outside the city limits.
I’m not so pessimistic as DavidD but I too do not foresee New Yorkers standing in line. Rather, they’ll get someone to do that for them. Deliveroo or whatnot. They’ll hire someone to pick their shopping and deliver it.
No sales tax?
Subsidized lower prices than regular stores?
Security provided by government employees (but not the defunded NYPD)?
No IDs? (because that’s racist)
The smart bodegas will be getting their stock from local junkies who steal (who’s going to stop them?) or even buy from the .gov stores. Direct EBT to cash transactions, and no hassle.
Arbitrage is a thing.
The NEW YORK SOVIET COLLECTIVE will be glorious….Komrade!
Everything I ever needed to know about government controlled necessities is embodied in the fight that took place over Cleveland Municipal Light in the mid 1970’s. The plant had been built in 1907 ostensibly to provide ‘honest competition’ to the local power company. As with most things that A) charge the public prices set by politicians and B) require regular rate increases to keep up with costs, Muny Light fell behind on its maintenance. By the 1970’s it hadn’t actually produced a watt of power in years if not decades. It bought power from the local company, which was forced to sell, and sold power below the price it paid for it. The city had run up millions of dollars in debt to the power company this way, but Dennis Kucinich fought to keep the plant going. If it hadn’t been a government concern, it would have been bankrupt many times over, but Kucinich (being, indeed, a Democrat) felt justified in keeping it going on the backs of the power company’s rate payers.
Frankly, on that basis alone, Kucinich should be tarred and feathered.
Seems I remember Bernie Sanders saying that having to stand it bread lines will be a good thing.
That’s the kind of thing said by people who are sure they will never have to.
The right people are never in charge.
I too wonder how long it will take the local fauna to start helping themselves, this also will undercut the local small grocery shops. Well it will till the .gov store shelves are empty because of racism.
We have something similar out here in the west. Indian reservations get subsidized food stock’s from Uncle Sam. So if you’re adjacent to one of the rez’s people go there to by government cheese and tax free smokes. I dunno how long the cheese holds out. They seem to keep the tobacco shelves full though.
But I suspect the denizens of NYFC will be a little more energetic in their activities than the indigenous broods.