P.J. O'Rourke once wrote, "if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's 'free'."
Something similar can be said about the socialist dream of city-run grocery stores that will supposedly sell items at 30 percent under retail prices.
The "city-run grocery store" (more correctly referred to as taxpayer-subsidized) idea has been implemented before in other cities, and I previously wrote about how that went over in Kansas City:
Kansas City tried 1 city-run grocery store for $18 million. The result?
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 27, 2026
✅ Barren shelves
✅ Rotting food
✅ 24/7 theft pic.twitter.com/96sl0obB8Y
Team Mamdani will look at the above example and just conclude that local officials just didn't throw enough taxpayer money at it, and this time it will be different.
The city-run store idea seems to be getting increasingly expensive. How will Mamdani handle concerns from private grocers about being undercut by taxpayer-funded stores? They might just give them some money too:
Lead official for Mayor Mamdani's NYC Groceries tells me city may give grants to local grocers fearing competition from city-run stores
— Dan Rivoli (@danrivoli) August 19, 2026
"policies and programs, grants, incentives that can come alongside these grocery stores to support other local independent businesses" pic.twitter.com/S57e8Ne13B
So when the original plan has inherent problems, just spend more money to clean up messes that will be caused. The secondary problem they're throwing money at will of course create more problems, which they will also try to "fix" by — you guessed it — throwing even more money at it. That's the socialism circle of eventual death and why those utopian ideas fail miserably every time.
LOL, NY citizens are going to pay to subsidize the 30%-off, city-run stores, and then ALSO pay to subsidize all the stores around those city-run stores.
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) August 20, 2026
And this is before the tax payers have bought any groceries for themselves. https://t.co/XGw2btGQqu
Nobody will be able to afford food but that won't matter because there won't be anywhere to buy it. Call it "Communist Ozempic."
A complete and total scam costing millions.
— JWF (@JammieWF) August 20, 2026
Subsidizing the for-profit grocery stores to keep them in business while the government grocery stores sell groceries below their costs is quite the plan to turn everything into a government grocery store. https://t.co/DOBcoLMoM5
— Boo (@IzaBooboo) August 20, 2026
And eventually end up with no grocery stores because the taxpayers who were subsidizing it all moved away.
White Cue Ball chick putting black and immigrant bodegas in Harlem out of business so rich white DSA kids living in Bushwick can shoplift bananas is exactly Mamdani's base goal https://t.co/Y2V8WZl3P5
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 20, 2026
So not only will the city be selling groceries, it will also be paying other grocery store owners not to sell groceries. This just keeps getting more insane. https://t.co/djX8wnRWSl
— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) August 20, 2026
The stores are far from being open (if that even ever happens) but we already know what's destined to happen.
