Mamdani Pushes Socialist “free stuff theory” with Government-Run Grocery Store

As a typical left-wing socialist, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes policies that are founded on the misbelief that governance can provide a range of “free stuff” for the people. He defies the simple wisdom of Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman, who famously said “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” So, who pays for all that free stuff? The taxpayers, of course.

Socialism is an increasingly voracious redistribution of wealth. One way or another, someone pays for all the so-called benefits provided by government. And when government undertakes services that could be provided by private sector enterprises, the costs increase exorbitantly – that is until the socialist system eventually crashes. And it always does. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher correctly noted, “You eventually run out of other people’s money.”

There is no better example than Mamdani’s “free” grocery.

One can almost picture the scene in the mayor’s office: Zohran Mamdani, with the starry-eyed certainty of a true believer, announces that the city will build and operate its own supermarkets. The first one, slated for East Harlem’s La Marqueta, carries a startup price tag of $30 million for a mere nine thousand square feet of retail space. That works out to more than $3000 per square foot – four times what a competent private operator would spend to construct a similar store.

Industry experts note that a comparable supermarket could be built for under $10 million. But why let mere facts interfere with socialist genius? The total bill for five such city-run emporiums across the boroughs clocks in at $70 million in capital funds alone. And that figure does not even touch the feasibility studies, the bureaucratic overhead, or the endless delays. The first store will not open its doors until late 2027 or early 2029 — depending on which set of shifting promises one chooses to believe.

The ongoing operating costs promise to be even more breathtaking. Experts predict that each of these government groceries will lose at $300,000 each year in perpetuity — even though the city provides the land rent-free and absorbs the construction debt. (Meaning taxpayers will pay since government never pays – it only redistributes the money.)

No profit motive also means no incentive to control costs. Prevailing wage rules, union mandates, interagency red tape, and political patronage will ensure that every head of lettuce arrives at the shelf wrapped in layers of taxpayer-funded inefficiency, waste, and fraud.

Private grocers, by contrast, operate on razor-thin margins precisely because competition forces them to innovate, negotiate, and eliminate waste. Government has no such discipline. It simply raises taxes, prints more money, or borrows from future yet unborn taxpayers to cover today’s free stuff.

Beneath that thin covering of good intentions lies the hairy mess of inefficiency, waste, and ultimate failure that defines all such government intrusions.

This is why socialist programs become so costly, and why they inevitably collapse under their own weight. Bureaucrats do not answer to the customers or the taxpayers. They answer to political patrons. There is no bottom line to watch, no shareholders to satisfy, no fear of bankruptcy to sharpen the mind. Every decision becomes a jobs program for cronies, every price reduction a subsidy extracted from the productive. The result is not abundance but scarcity sold at premium prices.

Mamdani’s scheme is classic creeping socialism – the slow poison that begins with “affordable” staples and ends with bread lines. It does not storm the Bastille with bayonets. It sneaks through the back door with press releases and photo ops. Yet the results are the same — bigger government, higher taxes, and fewer choices for the very people it claims to help.

History offers a grim parade of such failures. Look at Venezuela, once the richest nation in Latin America. Socialist strongman Hugo Chavez and his successor nationalized industries, seized private farms, and promised free food for all. The result? Empty supermarket shelves, hyperinflation that turned millionaires into paupers, and citizens reduced to scavenging garbage dumps or eating zoo animals. Millions fled the paradise of “free stuff theory” for the realities of capitalist neighbors.

In Cuba, decades of state-controlled rationing have produced chronic shortages and a black market that thrives on desperation.

The Soviet Union, that grand laboratory of pure socialism, delivered famines that killed millions while party elites dined on caviar. Even the creeping variety has its victims.

Britain’s postwar nationalization of industries led to the “Winter of Discontent” — with striking workers, rotting garbage in the streets, and an economy on life support until Thatcher administered the necessary corrective measures.

Closer to home, American cities that embraced heavy-handed redistribution now boast sky-high taxes, fleeing businesses, and residents who cannot afford the very basics their leaders swore to provide “free.” American style socialism has driven such cities as Detroit to the edge of bankruptcy.

With socialism, the people will always suffer — eventually. Under socialism, the poor do not get better groceries. They get longer waits, lower quality, and fewer options. The middle class watches its earnings vanish into the maw of government inefficiency. Entrepreneurs who once stocked shelves with variety and value pack up and leave – as Target and Whole Foods have already begun to do in New York City. What remains is dependency — a population trained to look to City Hall for its daily bread rather than to the marketplace where innovation actually occurs.

Mamdani’s “free” grocery is not a solution. It is a warning. Socialism does not deliver free lunch; it delivers an enormous bill and an empty plate. Taxpayers of New York would do well to remember Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher before the next round of the “free stuff theory” empties their wallets and their pantries.

The only thing that come free with socialism is the suffering it inevitably imposes on everyone – from the supposed beneficiaries to the overburdened taxpayers. When will we learn from the unbroken line of socialism’s failures?

So, there ‘tis.