Government-Owned Grocery Stores Aren’t the Solution
Whether Zohran Mamdani’s goal is to address food scarcity or reduce prices, public ownership of supermarkets makes no sense.
Not a public employee yet.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North AmericaZohran Mamdani brings a lot of guts, charisma and hustle to his campaign for New York City mayor, along with a laudable desire to offer the public a break with a dysfunctional status quo. Unfortunately, the break he’s offering largely consists of bad ideas.
On that list, the idea of government-run grocery stores is far from the most pernicious — but it is the most grimly fascinating, in part because nobody seems to be asking for it. The demand to “freeze the rent” on the slightly less than half of the city’s rental stock that is subject to rent stabilization regulations is misguided for lots of boring Economics 101 reasons. But it’s also true that, for many of those same reasons, it will serve the short-term interests of rent-stabilized tenants. I think it’s a bad idea, I wish he weren’t running on it, and it’s regrettable that so many New York voters seem excited by it. But I do understand what they’re thinking.