Below is an expanded version of my column in the New York Post on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s press conference this week on his planned state-run grocery stores. The plan is a multimillion-dollar version of the $5 gold watch grift. The chumps are New York taxpayers who believe that Mamdani can sell them produce at a discount of 30 percent below the market rate and not lose money. Indeed, this could end up the most expensive produce in the Big Apple.
Here is the column:
Last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s short stint as a faux president ended with an embarrassing acknowledgment that he could not, as promised during his campaign, arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
So, this week, Mamdani the Grocer made a reappearance, with details on the five city-run grocery stores that he will open.
But rather than deliver discount groceries, Mamdani is selling New Yorkers a bill of goods that will cost them millions.
What Mamdani described was a discount food bank dressed up as a grocery. Standing in front of blackboards saying “REDUCED 30%,” Mamdani sounded like a bodega hawker: “Once a month, our five city-run grocery stores will set prices for this core set of goods at 30% below typical retail prices. No exceptions, no gimmicks”
Here’s the most delicious part: the presser was a gimmick from beginning to end.
The mayor promised that “The savings will last for the entire month. That means no weekly fluctuations or sticker shock at the checkout line — not for our seniors living on fixed incomes, nor for the parents who rely on a regular supply of apple slices to keep toddler tantrums at bay.”
The Mamdani markets are new variations of an old New York grift: selling gold watches for $5. The dupes want to believe that somehow this street vendor, surreptitiously displaying watches inside his overcoat, actually found a way to sell “solid gold watches” for just a few bucks.
The math simply does not add up for Mamdani. Most groceries have an average profit margin between 1% and 3%, one of the smallest margins of any industry.
To promise a 30% discount below market rate that cannot be adjusted due to monthly market fluctuations is economically absurd.
It is not a description of a competitive grocery but a public charity. It is a quasi-food bank where taxpayers subsidize the cost.
As usual, Mamdani turns this into a class war, demonizing business owners. He suggests that real grocery stores are simply price gougers hoarding windfall profits from consumers. He ignores that they must pay rent, upkeep and fees — all things the city-run stores may simply write off.
He proclaimed, “May the most affordable grocery store win.”
Of course, the test is not which grocery is the most affordable, but which is the most sustainable. If you are willing to take a bath on sales, you can always offer the most affordable prices for as long as your excess cash holds out.
In Mamdani’s case, he has the credit of New York City to draw on to compete against Mom-and-Pop bodegas.
The subsidy, however, is only part of the costs. The average bodega owner must cover the fixed costs of renting a space, building the store, and complying with inspectors. Those are the fixed costs that must be internalized into the cost of produce to break even.
Real stores are competing in one of the tightest markets in the world and are grappling with a 33% nationwide increase in costs since 2019. Mamdani wants to use the stores to prove that socialism works as part of his effort to introduce New York to the “warmth of socialism.” We may never know the real costs of the Mamdani markets.
According to the New York Post, the city plans to open an East Harlem location as its first store, at a reported cost of $30 million.
However, that is not the full cost. The Post also reported that the city had already appropriated $25 million to improve the first site. The city will lose millions that could have been acquired through a sale of the land or through rents to private companies. Those costs are left on other ledgers and not likely counted in the true costs of the Mamdani markets.
The first store will not even open until 2027 despite the props behind Mamdani. The second Manhattan store will not open until 2029. That is three years and tens of millions of dollars for just the first two stores.
That is how Mamdani is promising New Yorkers savings of “$90 a month, or roughly $1,000 a year.” He is using the city to subsidize food under the guise of selling at low, but still profitable prices. Ironically, those who can take advantage of the subsidy at the first two stores in Manhattan will be anyone, including the privileged, wealthy New Yorkers whom Mamdani denounces for not paying their fair share. After all, everyone wants below-market-priced slices in the Big Apple.
The first city-run grocery, in East Harlem, will cost $30 million to build — and perhaps more. It will never need to pay this money back nor factor it into its prices. The “warmth of socialism” will cover it; that is, you.
In reality, Mamdani will be selling apples at a far greater cost than any competitor, but those true costs will be buried in the city budget and paid for by the taxpayers.
Indeed, the Mamdani markets are likely to prove the most expensive groceries in the city.
Mamdani, however, has never sweated the math or the means. He knows that the focus will be on the cash register price and not the true cost.
Of course, there is a big difference between the gold watch grift and the Mamdani grift: buying a knockoff watch only costs chumps a few bucks. The Mamdani con will cost New Yorkers millions, and most will thank him for it.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
I love the fact that Local Democrats running stores are going to be Destroyed!
The secret to beating Democrats…is take away federal money…and let them DESTROY THEMSELVES!
My only question is how far is the city of New York going to fall. It has been bailed out in the past but will the state or the Federal Government bail it out again. In the past, financially, New York City was, without a doubt, the biggest thing in Finance and power in the US but that world is long past. Other states and other cities have caught up and are surpassing NYC and doing it rapidly. The urgency to save the city is just not there. With the growth of other centers and the diffusion of power and influence, one wonders if this fall with be a catastrophe of will it just simply be a footnote as this city drops out and goes belly up. Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Tampa, Orlando are all sucking in the transplants and jockeying for ascendancy. I think the better story is who will win that competition.
New York City is sort of dropping out of the important news cycles.
So how is it that your can forecast the demise of NYC considering you’re never been mayor of NYC, or any town, city or metropolis. You’re not a municipal economist, a business leader, or anyone with a successful work history. Yet you show up here to denigrate a dark skinned foreigner simply because his voters, yes his voters and supporters, want what he offers. Gawd, it must be awful being a bigot and a racist.
History tends to repeat and reveal the future when ignored. Have you already forgotten the idiot Communist De Blazero?
Full steam ahead Comrades, puts them closer to their end!
Hey, Anony, you apparently are afflicted with mural dyslexia: an inability to read the handwriting on the wall.
You’re in the wrong blog
And you show up up here to be an idiot…
Of all the moronic replies possible to GEB’s comment, this is the most moronic. What GEB wrote is so obvious as to be a truism.
A Truthful Letter
(What the mayor would say if he had Jim Carrey’s problem in Liar Liar and physically could not lie)
Dear Taxpayer,
Thanks for electing me.
I floated affordable groceries in my campaign. So here’s what you’re actually getting: city-owned grocery stores, built with your tax dollars, run on your tax dollars, and kept afloat with your tax dollars when they lose money, which they will.
This is what leadership looks like. I made a promise, you voted for it, and now the bill is yours.
The stores may not turn a profit. The shelves may or may not stay stocked. But that’s the beauty of public service, you pay twice, once in taxes to build it, and again in taxes to keep it running.
I looked into financing this honestly, through a municipal bond, the kind investors have to underwrite with their own money. Turns out nobody wants to bet their own money on a store built to lose money on purpose. So I skipped the part where I’d have to prove this works, and sent you the invoice instead.
At 30% below market and 100% above common sense, all on your dime.
Sincerely,
Your Mayor
“So I skipped the part where I’d have to prove this works . . .”
Exactly!
Socialists always put “I wish” above “it is.” Then when reality doesn’t bend to their wishes, they wish harder — and compel you to pay more to fulfill their wishful fantasies.
Until the entire economy gets a rude notice: Account Overdrawn.
Good point, Sam. However, according to public records, the city’s already overdrawn, a projected $10.4 billion budget gap for FY2027 on top of this year’s shortfall. This grocery scheme just adds another withdrawal to an account already in the red.
Stupid comemnt. As usual.
I remember Abe Beame and those Big Mac bonds. And then the precedent was set so Uncle Sam bailed out Chrysler Corporation
Olly, ever setup or mange a supermarket chain, or a single shop – anywhere? Didn’t think so. You show your usual stupidity and ignorance. Have you ever achieved anything in life? But a young dark skinned foreigner has and that must hurt your feelings. I only hope your ilk soon depart this life.
Not before you.
True. For New York City to flourish once again, it will require that the right to vote for mayor and similar power positions will be restricted to land owners, or to those who can pass a test of common sense
Mandami is a tool. His IQ is seriously deficient. He’s the right color and religion otoh. NY is antisemitic and anti Christian.
The people shopping there are free to simply take what they want because they’ve already paid for it. No one would pay twice. The point is to cut out the middleman. Hasn’t the government become the middleman or capitalists?
It’s the same con the government uses for Medicare. Studies show recipients take out MUCH more than they contributed. That’s why it is so popular. If you deposit $100,000 in a bank, and the bank let’s you take out $200,000, that’s going to be the most popular bank – until it goes bankrupt.
Voters simply do not care that all the Democrat schemes are bankrupting the country. The way they look at it is the Democrats made the promise that if they paid “x” into Medicare, then when they retire they get to feed at the trough. It’s perfectly rational for the seniors to expect the government to honor that promise. That’s why they fell for the con. They don’t care that they were lied to about costs. Their view is they are “entitled” to it. The government stole the money from them while they were working. Now it’s their turn. Let the next generation figure out how to fix the mess Democrats created.
=========
What you’d expect to happen with Mamdani’s scheme is the private sector grocers will be unable to compete against subsidized groceries. You’d expect mass bankruptcies. But I doubt they go bankrupt. Instead, the private sector grocers will scream bloody murder. The NYC government will likely respond by subsidizing them – which was probably the unstated goal all along. Effectively “nationalize” all grocers, but on a city wide basis instead of nationwide, whatever that is called. That’s when the broader NYC society will feel the pain.
Democrats are deranged idealists who are untethered from reality.
“But I doubt they go bankrupt.”
The corporate stores won’t. They have the capital to weather the socialist storm.
But here’s who might go bankrupt: bodegas and the guy who owns a pushcart selling fruit. Which is rather ironic since socialists accuse, e.g., Walmart, of destroying mom-and-pop businesses.
The problem with your argument about Medicare is that one does not have a choice to not subsidize Medicare through federal income taxes and Medicare taxes through mandatory taxation of earnings while working when younger. There is no choice to “opt out” of Medicare. Even if one desired to not take Medicare and purchase private health insurance instead when one turned 65 y/o, federal Medicare law passed in 1965 by a Democrat Congress (with a 2/3 Senate supermajority) and signed into law by Democrat President Johnson made it illegal for insurance companies to sell private health insurance to people eligible for Medicare. It is the Democrats that are wholly responsible for this erosion of an American’s personal liberty.
Hopefully there’s enough of a majority in the electorate to overcome what the huddled masses, and the wretched refuse fail to see as to why Mamdani and the rest of his ilk, both local, national, and in the government itself, are here, and what history has taught us that their agenda is. They came to blow up America and those who support them are nothing more than their useful tools.
A majority? Mamdani was elected with a 50% majority. Considering Andrew Como was on the ballot, the voters rejected Cuomo (man with a ton of baggage and wildly corrupt) for the known for the unknown – Mamdani. And you think those NYC voters are stupid?
Yes, the majority of voters, who voted for Mamdani over the Granny-killer, were stupid. It was obvious that the Granny-killer was the only rational choice for the city.
Doesn’t seem any different than the GOP farm subsidy grift.
Any type of government assistance to lower the market rate of a good is a “grift” based on this article.
While I think Mamdani’s idea is ill-advised, there’s nothing unique about it. Just a less efficient form of food stamps.
Farm subsidies are intended to make sure farms do not fail during cycles of low produce prices to protect the long term national food supply. That is not the same as wealth redistribution.
Farm subsidies have been around since the 1930’s. Seems like it’s been one long cycle. So your saying the USA is failure at growing produce?
Farm subsidies are a government provided hedge against losses from the high risk business of agriculture. Fertilizer, diesel fuel, water supply, Monsanto seed extortion, labor force costs, etc are all fluctuating necessary cost items susceptible to unforeseen market changes. Other costly impacts can come from over production of a target, crop life, pest infestations, weed control and unpredictable weather pattern events that can result in a multi million dollar loss in one year.
Those are all reasons for subsidizing farmers, to keep them farming to feed Americans and China.
You are describing crop insurance. Not subsidies. Subsidies stabilize food prices and increase farmer income to artificially make domestic farm products more competitive vs imported competition.
Farm subsidies are, by definition, a socialist program that is supported by our nominally anti-socialist party.
The federal crop insurance program is subsidized by tax dollars where government (tax payers) pays 60% and farmers pay 40% of premiums for loss of crops against their cost at market.
SUBSIDIZING
Socialism is the biggest grift of all time, clearly. We all know but it bears spelling out for those that were never taught history or economics and are accustomed to using loans and credit cards to pay for everything: you are paying more because you are paying more than once by being taxed more. There is no ‘free’, and there is no ‘discount’, just as a phone isn’t ‘free’ – the cost is rolled into your phone bill. This goes for literally anything subsidized by the government. None of it is ‘free’, and the person paying for it is you.
Socialism is the biggest grift of all time, clearly….. Really? And you know that how? Another stupid comment.
How does James know that?
He understands basic economics.
He knows history.
Two things of many that you have failed.
@Anonymous
Because emotionally and intellectually I am not the equivalent of a five year-old. This would obviously go over the head of someone that is that. Go blow, you are ridiculous.
Trust me: the rest of us are not looking forward to putting pampers on you. You don’t rattle or shock anyone, because you couldn’t possibly do that. If you weren’t so sheltered and ignorant that would make sense to you. We feel sorry for you and wonder what the heck we will do with you in the future when you are simply broken, because we re capable of foresight, and that is how you will almost certainly end up. It is like watching a car crash in real time and knowing you will have to clean it up.
“He (Mamdani) ignores that they (private grocers) must pay rent, upkeep and fees…”
He also ignores that they must pay for armed robbery, shoplifting, rioting, and looting–all by Democrats.
Stupid comemnt.
It’s not a stupid comment, but I think it is mistaken; the city-owned groceries will have to pay for all of that too. The robbers, shoplifters, rioters, and assorted other Democrat criminals will not magically leave these stores alone because they belong to “the people”. They don’t care. They will rob “the people” as readily as they do everyone else.
Bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of black criminals’ victims are black. There’s no solidarity there, no feeling that crime should be directed only at the ofay. Criminals prey on the vulnerable and the available, and for the most part that’s people who live in the same neighborhood and look the same as them.
AOC will fight this. She already told us they only steal because they are hungry. It doesn’t matter if the food is 30% cheaper to them. Free is better.
So commies lie to get into power? whodathunkit
Commies lie? I would have thought it was obvious to you that Trump is prodigious liar. Missed that huh.
Yes, communists lie. The fact that Trump does too is irrelevant; compared to them he’s an amateur.
The paradox of socialism is that no matter how many times it has been tried and failed, there are always more who are willing to try again—with the same fervor, conviction, and belief that it will work.
The two foremost responses to the “tried and failed” counterargument are:
1. “This time we’ll do it right.”
2. “This time we won’t make the same mistakes.”
It’s not a failure, it’s a feature. Socialism is planned obsolescence. Once instituted, the ideals are abandoned as it is simply a vehicle for tyrants and dictators to take over and rule over you.
And you got that from Encylopea Britannica, maybe WikiPatents?
“tried and failed, there are always more who are willing to try again…” Isn’t that what made America great? But if a dark skinned foreigner tries, he’s attacked and ridiculed.
Geez… racism takes many forms eh don?
The City wants to put such stores in underserved, poorer areas. What you are ignorant of is that the businesses they are putting out of business more frequently “are dark skinned foreigners.” Are you a racist?
No, repeating failure is NOT what makes America great. On the contrary, it’s the ability to learn from other people’s mistakes.
But socialism isn’t a mistake; it does what it was always designed to do. It always leads to slavery and mass murder, because that’s what it was designed for.
Mamdani’s “state-run grocery stores.”
Socialists reject learning from socialism’s failures — Venezuela, Mao, Soviet Russia, Cuba, et al. Those failures, they allege, are just too far away and in the distant past.
So how about some failures closer to home and right now:
The government grocery store in Kansas City went bankrupt, after years of limping along. And after burning through some *$30 million* of taxpayer money.
*Seven* government-funded grocery stores in Chicago just went bankrupt — this week. After, of course, squandering millions in taxpayer funding.
Socialists reject learning from socialism’s failures … um…. how do you know that Sam? You must be a socialist because you keep making stupid comments.
THIS right here ^^^ these are the dopes who think free stuff just drops out of the sky from lenin.
It bothers you that your communist inclinations are rejected here? Sorry commie! Go back to commieland.
Very eloquent – for an idiot. Stay is your cesspool.
@Anonymous
To an extent, we are talking about a generation (generations, now) that has staunchly refused to learn anything from anyone or their mistakes and has created mess after mess for the larger whole again and again as a result. They destroy systems without understanding why the systems were built in the first place. We all know malignant narcissism; this is malignant ignorance. Willful, too. They are prime candidates for being exploited by tyrants.
So its all about generational learning problems? The new generation are all idiots? Obviously your generation produced millions of functional idiots. I can’t imagine you were ever successful at anything. As for those systems, your generation never destroyed anything? And now that you’re older and wiser (a misnomer) you think your blurps here are pearls of wisdom for this generation? Talk about being incapable of learning.
Clearly you are a generation of idiots so much so, you need mommy and daddy to take with you to job interviews, 77% of Gen Z job seekers have brought a parent to an interview—they’re even getting them to negotiate pay rises and take their hiring tests
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/gen-z-job-seekers-have-brought-a-parent-to-interview-research-reveals/
And as you failed basic economics, you need mommy and daddy to support you, Many Gen Z adults still get financial help from their parents
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/12/many-gen-z-adults-still-get-financial-help-from-their-parents.html
Sam knows this from something called history. History, a subject you clearly failed. Another subject you also failed was economics.
How much of the $25 million will find its way to a bank account in Switzerland?
Stupid comment. And you pretend to be a lawyer?
As Anonymous of 7:16 AM says, it’s a stupid question. The reason it’s stupid is because Swiss banks are no longer the bastions of privacy that they once were. The US government forced them to betray their customers, and it now gets a full report on everything they do. As far as I know the Caymans are the same, and so are all the notorious shelters that crooks used to use.
You’re correct to suppose that a large part of the money will be finding its way into various people’s pockets, but I don’t know where they can stash them for safekeeping nowadays. For all I know they’re reduced to hiding diamonds in their mattresses.
If NYC can even run a grocery store. It hasn’t opened yet. I bet it will be a disaster. Either shelves will be empty or it will have lots of spoiled produce piling up.
Are you saying you ran a failed grocery store in NYC? I’ll bet you only were a bag boy.
“I bet it will be a disaster”.
Bet, ok, how much?
“Wahhhh! Everyone’s making fun of my fascist Mayor!”
He LIED to you to get elected and took you for a SUCKER!
Well the good news is that Democrats are more highly educated than Republicans, and they will see right through this snake oil salesman.
So intelligence and Republicans are mutually exclusive, is that what you’re saying?
Ask any Democrat and they will tell you that nearly half of their party members have a college degree vs 31% of Republican Party members. With their nose held high, they equate this higher “education” with intelligence, kind of like yourself. My original statement never said anything about Dems being more intelligent or Republicans being stupid. You’re overthinking my comment because you are so highly “educated”, haha.
Overthinking? Not that anyone would blame you for having a brain. You just validated your comemnt. Obviously you do not have a college degree because you condescend to those who do. There is a clear bias on this blog in which the uneducated feel the need to offend and denigrate degreed persons. That sound about right? BTW, you’re like 75 and you call yourself Billy?
Once again, wrong. As usual.
There are lots of people with degrees I hold in high regard. PT is one of them. Bill Maher. Elon Musk. Lin. OldManFromKS.
And then there are people with degrees who cannot change a tire. Make a dinner. Run a city or should I say, have a degree and run a city into the ground like Mamdani can.
Billy can go by whatever he wants to.
You on the other hand, are generally referred to as “Failure to launch.” Even by your own parents.
Learn how to spell comment. Talk about uneducated.
BillyG,
Well said.
No, intelligence and education are not the same thing at all. If anything, the evidence seems to show that education can make someone stupid, or at least more gullible. Hence the common phrase “there are some things so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them”.
“The Mamdani con will cost New Yorkers millions, and most will thank him for it.” And isn’t that the point of socialism? Let’s not begin to think other cities, states and the fed. gov do not subsidize grocery products.
Americanactionforum.org: “The federal government primarily subsidizes corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, peanuts, and rice, which account for a significant portion of agricultural subsidies.” So if a socialist does it, its bad, if the federal gov. does it its good.
Don’t forget milk subsidies by Washington. Milk subsidies significantly impact dairy farmers’ income by providing financial support that can offset losses due to low market prices. For instance, in 2016, farmers in New York and Vermont faced losses of $16.34 and $17.38 per hundred pounds of milk, respectively, highlighting the varying effects of subsidies across states.
What this economically illiterate fool is spending is “the credit of New York City.” I have not seen or studied the history of the credit worthiness of American cities, but I believe that none of our cities has ever actually been solvent financially. They have all depended on increasing growth and revenues from tax collections or locally recoverable customs revenues to maintain the illusion that they are economically viable. I think that the growing depopulation of our cities by the most productive inhabitants is the real problem. The capable governing/ruling class has left the city. It’s only a matter of time before New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles face the music. If there’s a recession and it’s prolonged, the demise of those cities will go into overdrive.
Illiterate fool? And what are you then Jack? Gotta ask, have you ever been a mayor of a city the size of NYC. Answer: nope. Ever been an elected official? Answer: nope. So how is it that your so smart in the ways of city management? It never dawned on you that the position of NYC mayor is not an administrative job, but political. Do you know what than entails? Didn’t think so. BTW, he’s a dark skinned foreigner, I got the feeling that affects your mindset. As with many others here.
Subsidies are like a narcotic; they create dependency by subsidizing extra producers who consumers don’t want. It thus conveniently creates a constituency for Democrats, since federal Democrats created the subsidies, so it’s socialists at all levels doing subsidies, not just Mamdani.
Narcotic? Oh shut up you fool.
Did you just inject up?
Would those losses have had anything to do with the NAFTA trade agreement with Canada. The inability to sell our dairy products to Canada while importing their dairy products to flood that market at a lesser cost? Crazy huh? Thank Goodness Trump scuttled that idiotic trade deal.
Agree
Can anyone say subsidy.
Reminds me of the old saying “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Rent is not being charged. And the city is paying the construction financing costs. For a typical grocer these must represent a significant percentage of total cost. I wonder how much of the 30% discount these subsidies will cover.
As long as it’s an equal opportunity discount program, including BACON 🥓🥓🥓
Nice CON-man Mamdani is. LOL
You got proof? Didn’t think so. Allegations only.
As usual, you add nothing to the convresation.
As usual, you add nothing to the conversation steve.
BTW, what conversation?
And, “convresation” is spellt C O N V E R S A T I O N.
It’s spelt not spellt you idiot.🤣🤣
Delicious
How do you “spellt?”
Must of gone to a Blue city, public education system and then a DEI higher indoctrination camp to learn how to “spellt” that.
Ummm, excuse me Mamdani voter, HE LIED TO YOU! That’s a con-man and you drank his kool-aid and are mad at us because he lied to you? HAHAHAHA That’s the proof you desired. pay attention!
tell me, who didn’t know Mamdani couldn’t arrest Netanyahu? Was it you that was that dumb? was it Mamdani? Both?
YOU have egg on your face because your commie mayor lied to you to get elected!!! And you believed him. What a maroon!
God I love this stuff, please libs, come here and expose your idiocy daily and make my day.
No one here claimed to be a Mamdani voter. You just exposed your idiocy. That make your day?
It appears that Mr “Katz” may become a target of this scheme because in addition to his success as a New York City supermarket mogul he also owns the mainstay of local AM Talk Radio.
There are moments when the motivation is simply “Don’t just stand there. Do something!” It doesn’t always fail completely … Trump, for example.