OPINION:
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory, his agenda should concern all New Yorkers. This election may dictate the fate of one of America’s most famous cities, often proclaimed “the financial capital of the world,” as well as the political trajectory of the country.
Mr. Mamdani echoed constituents’ concerns about the cost of living in New York City.
“People work too hard for too little and are losing faith in democracy’s ability to deliver for them,” he explained in a CBS interview.
His platform claims to address food and transportation affordability, housing, education, and even the minimum wage. What most New Yorkers don’t seem to recognize is the damage socialist policies will have in their lives, no matter how convincing they may seem in rhetoric.
One of Mr. Mamdani’s most contentious projects is the network of government-owned and operated grocery stores located in each of New York City’s five boroughs.
By keeping food prices artificially low, and without having to pay rent or property taxes, his centrally planned stores aim to address food affordability in the city.
While it is true that New Yorkers and Americans have been feeling the squeeze at the register due to Biden-era inflationary policies, the answer is not government-run grocery stores akin to communist predecessors.
Millions lived through the socioeconomic and political turmoil of China’s state-owned enterprises, Soviet Russia’s bread lines, and Venezuela’s state-controlled industries, and this harmful ideology has no place in America.
Privately-owned grocery stores typically maintain 1-3% profit margins, but Mr. Mamdani claims his bodegas will be run for no profit.
His “solution” of raising local corporate and income taxes to finance these poorly run government alternatives takes a page out of the socialist wealth redistribution handbook, which has failed in economic theory and practice.
The city of Erie, Kansas, established a town-owned store in 2021, but was forced to close after less than four years of operating at a loss. As of 2024, the market is now owned by a private company.
The Erie municipality found it too difficult and costly for taxpayers to run, illuminating how the private sector is better equipped to handle the intricacies of operating a business.
Government grocery store failures from across the country and internationally have provided important lessons. Long lines and shortages are normal, customer service is poor, and theft is common.
Government stores in Erie or St. Paul, Kansas, or Baldwin, Florida, were responding to food deserts in their respective towns. But New York City is a dense urban environment with hundreds of stores. Introducing government grocers into saturated areas will add bureaucratic inefficiency to the market and displace stores that cannot compete with artificially low prices.
The historical example of a small town-owned store in Erie, Kansas, cost the local government $500,000 over the life of the project. Mr. Mamdani plans to spend $65 million on his socialist stores, which are inherently designed to fail.
By keeping prices artificially low in government stores, demand for those goods will rise. Combating scarcity will be paramount. For an entity completely unfamiliar with the ins and outs of running a grocery store, keeping up with high demand is an arduous task that the government is ill-equipped to address.
Leave it to the mayor-elect to think he knows how to run a grocery store better than mom-and-pop shops. The government simply cannot compete with the free market and experienced entrepreneurs.
But that is precisely why he offers to mask these issues with taxpayer-funded subsidies, such as no rent, property taxes, and barriers to entry for his stores only. Private businesses will feel the downward price pressure from artificially low government prices and will be forced to cut costs by laying off workers or closing shops.
Though Mr. Mamdani claims this project will lower food costs and ease affordability concerns for New Yorkers, nothing is ever free in a socialist system. Consumers will feel the cost through shortages, unemployment, and increased tax and debt burdens — and Mamdani certainly has no problem burning through other people’s money.
Mr. Mamdani wants New Yorkers to believe that his government-owned and operated grocery stores will be different than the failures of other states and countries, but they face the same structural issues.
While ideologues posit that some socialist policy “wasn’t real socialism” or that “it hasn’t really been tried,” history has shown how these policy failures stem from a philosophy at odds with human nature. The governmental corruption, economic destruction, and human loss of life under socialist systems in Cuba, Venezuela, and the Soviet Union are profound.
At the end of the day, capitalism outperforms socialism, free markets outperform government intervention, and private businesses outperform “Commie Mamdani’s” government grocery stores.
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Nicole Huyer is a senior research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.
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