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Mamdani’s Socialist Grocery Store
Feb 04, 2026 / Written by: Gary Isbell
Shopping in the Aisle of Denial
New York City’s new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to open city-run grocery stores to lower costs and help the working class… based on failed socialist policies.
Amid a few recent years of higher grocery prices, city-owned and managed grocery stores (called city-run) have resurfaced as eye-catching policy ideas to lower food costs and fight hunger. In truth, they have the opposite effect: wasting taxpayer money to support inefficient government-run shops that hurt local food businesses.
Mamdani bases the need for city-run grocery stores on a socialist agenda rather than hard data. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that the price of groceries is dropping.
The share of U.S. household income spent on groceries at home remains near historic lows, falling from 20–25 percent in the 1930s 1 to just 5–10 percent in 2024. 2
Mamdani’s Plan: Bad Economics
Mamdani plans to implement city-run grocery stores. This is a blatant feel-good dream that flouts basic economics. This sounds very good on paper, ‘free’ always does, that is, until the money needed to fund the free goods cannot be found.
He argues that these stores are necessary to address supposed food “deserts,” which are usually crime-ridden areas that retailers often avoid. He claims it will provide working-class New Yorkers with better access to affordable groceries. The pilot program, which plans to launch five stores across the city—one in each borough—is a core part of his socialist platform to lower grocery costs. His platform also includes freezing rent and increasing corporate taxes to fund this project.
However, a closer examination reveals his plan cannot succeed because it entirely replaces market signals—such as costs, property rights, profit and the profit motive—with bureaucratic decision-making, which is the classic Marxist alternative to a free market economy.
Why Socialism Cannot Work: The Property Rights Problem
Socialists view the economy as an engineering project, where every detail must be carefully planned and executed. They do not consider the need to adapt to the unpredictability of human nature and the diversity of human qualities. Their view is based on the misconception that having intelligent, well-meaning people in charge enables control over operations to achieve the desired results.
Such a system does not consider private property and its impact upon the individual. When people own property, they are motivated to use it wisely, care for it and find new ways to improve it. Property rights establish accountability—owners are responsible for the outcomes of their choices and reap the benefits of their success. This allows individuals to pursue gains that extend far beyond central planning.
City-run grocery stores eliminate these vital incentives. Without private ownership, no one has a personal stake in the store’s success. Bureaucrats spend other people’s money without facing personal consequences for failure. They lack the local knowledge and responsiveness that private owners have. Most importantly, they lack property rights to defend, a personal investment to protect or a profit motive to improve efficiency.
The Predictable Collapse
Thus, state-run groceries lack incentives to succeed. This is not a theoretical conclusion. This unnatural plan has already failed in Kansas, Florida and Missouri. Despite millions in taxpayer funding, these stores shut down after struggling with empty shelves and rampant crime shortly after opening.
Selling government-subsidized merchandise presents another significant flaw. When stores sell their products below market prices, customers rush to buy everything as soon as the products arrive. Every store that attempted this struggled to keep its shelves stocked.
In addition, municipal-run grocery stores are plagued by theft because managers lack the same incentives as those in privately owned stores to prevent it.
Central planning, as seen in Marxist-run places like Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela, inevitably leads to long lines and empty shelves.
Finding Solutions
Affordability comes from a free market, respect for property rights and increased competition, not from government control. Remove government restrictions and unfair regulations from the grocery sector, and prices will decrease.
Mamdani’s proposal will prove what socialism has always accomplished: it is unsustainable. It distorts incentives, hinders innovation and centralizes power, leading to economic stagnation, shortages and inefficient authoritarian rule.
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