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There’s already a push on his side to make this permanent before we even see how it plays out, and he’ll need to find city budget for this without an annual bailout from the state.

Another aspect of this is that it won’t really be more than a test run by 2029 when his first new store actually opens, which is also when he’s up for reelection.

Increasing income-based food relief would actually be a better, more equitable use of tax dollars, and one I’d support. This is subsidizing select items to put some smoke and mirrors around the fact his campaign promise was, as I said, dumb in the first place as far as broadly addressing costs.

Also want to add this is not the policy he campaigned on, which came from a belief that creating city-run stores that eliminated profit concerns would offer substantial relief for grocery prices, not just a few percentage points.

Yeah, you can’t really run on this if you’re being honest and saying “we can sell a can of corn that costs 99 cents at a chain store for 97 cents” … especially when the stores themselves are tax-funded.

And this is even worse if you draw shoppers who only go to stock up on meat and produce, because it’s the other products that would keep operating costs manageable.

Yeah, but this only true because market rates mean prices are comparable across stores, so you can choose based on convenience, vibe, etc. If fresh meat and produce are 30 percent cheaper at a store, you’d make the trip just for meat and produce.

Actually progressive economic policy favors high employment and higher wages over inflation risks, and when Biden did that, the American people hated it.

Actually rising labor costs have been a big factor in this kind of inflation. We rightly want the people who pick our produce and produce the food we eat to get living wages but also go nuts over any subsequent price increases.

My favorite part was when noted Michigan politics-knower Michael Moore predicted Bernie would win every county in the 2020 Michigan primary. He was only off by … every county in Michigan.

It’s not sustainable without increased city taxes. The entire city budget it’s only balanced on a one-time $5.5 billion bailout from the state, and this is a bigger expenditure if you scale it up. And compared to income-based subsidies, it isn’t even targeted to those most in need of help.

And a key reason food deserts exist in the first place is that grocery stores find they can’t maintain a profit. Oddly one of the actual benefits of mixed-income neighborhoods (aka gentrification) is that having shoppers who can afford high-end products helps keep them in business.

The press conference was shared live from the NYCMayor account on Twitter. I’m sure they’ll cut clips as well, but it’s being shared by the usual aggregators. I have thoughts on the Headquarters account sharing it I’ll save for another day. 😂

Also the first new-build city-run grocery isn’t slated to open in MYC until 2029, so we won’t see how this actually works for years.

We saw this a lot when egg prices spiked too. There were examples of price-gouging and price-fixing in the industry, but it was mostly driven by supply crunches from Avian flu. You can sell eggs for $2 dozen and be immediately out of eggs or raise prices to slow demand.

That’s a great question. This would be well below restaurant-supplier pricing and restaurants could have dedicated buyers who can monitor what these stores get and when.

Chains like Dollar General have proliferated by selling almost exclusively processed, shelf-stable foods because those have the best profit margins because there’s no risk of spoilage and your stock can stay on the shelf until it sells.

So you could, in fact, see people lining up when there is meat and produce and stores quickly running out of supply, at which point you do have something resembling a bread line in all the worst ways.

If you subsidize meat and produce (to sell them at a loss), you’ll also have people who don’t need this in terms of day-to-day survival who will just make purchases at a city-run store for the savings, which will lead to supply crunches at these stores.

Also this: “A municipal store might subsidize all items in the grocery store or only certain staple products, such as poultry, meat, and fresh produce, to keep them affordable. In the latter scenario, prices on other items would remain comparable to those at neighboring stores.”