Comment by klipt
6 hours ago
Government subsidized groceries seems like something that was already solved by food stamps. Having the government run entire grocery stores at a loss seems like a worse implementation of the same thing.
I guess it's nice for the voters who are too rich to qualify for food stamps, but in that case it would have been equivalent and simpler to just make the food stamps more universal (remove means testing).
If you really want something different to food stamps, India's subsidized canteens seem like a much more interesting idea: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/inside-indias...
Isn't the issue a lack of grocery stores in those areas? How would food stamps help with that? The issue isn't really affordability but rather absence of stores. It might not be profitable to run a store there but that's the point of a city run store in this case.
I have my suspicions about what’s going to happen. I worry the demand is going to be too high to realistically deal with. But dammit am I excited to see someone try something a bit different to address a very obvious need.
State-run stores aren’t really that special. A bunch of states have state-run liquor stores. The military runs commissaries. These don’t elicit much fear-mongering or attention on cable news for some reason.
Exactly what problem does it solve that food stamps cannot solve more simply?
It's not discounted groceries. It's stores in food deserts.
Respectfully, maybe spend 5 minutes reading about it from the horse’s mouth. The Mamdani admin has done a pretty good job, imo, of laying out the case, and explaining the plan for these 5 grocery stores.
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani...