- cross-posted to:
- nyc
- cross-posted to:
- nyc
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Neat.
Also when you scroll down on the page, the background gets more red. Is that a subtle “we’re turning more communist” joke? (Ok, it says
linear-gradient(180deg,#e2f3ff,#ffecd9), which isn’t really red)As someone that used to buy produce wholesale at the same warehouse that several local supermarkets did, you have no idea how much produce is marked up for retail. None at all.
A lot of produce goes bad as well. They regularly throw out a lot of it (unfortunately much of it into bins, but I guess there’s a food safety issue with giving it to homeless people).
Grocery stores in my country are operating on a 2-5% profit margin. All companies’ annual reports are public and shareholders can’t take dividends unless there’s profit AND there’s no tax on profit, only on dividends, so there’s little incentive to hide profits. And no, grocery prices aren’t cheap here either, they’re up a lot in the last 6 years and change.
If Mamdani could cut costs 30%, either the stores aren’t turning a profit (which they don’t need to since they’re being run for the benefit of New Yorkers), or Americans have it much worse in terms of price gouging. I suspect it might be the latter if there aren’t as many competing chains in the US. Here we’ve got 3-4 even in many small towns, 6-7 in the cities, and of course small independent ones in some places. And one of them is a co-op. But I’d still expect NYC in particular to have healthy competition, it’s such a huge market and so dense, room for a lot of competing stores.
Where the markup is criminal IMO is nonperishable goods. Fucking regular pens with a 300% markup in office supply stores, etc. Stuff they don’t have to throw out after a few days.
Everything is marked up crazy compared to its wholesale producer pricing
Everything is marked up for retail. Anything you buy in a mall is at least 200%.
I suppose there’s a big markup to account for what they’ll end up throwing out, and then the high price is part of why there’s so much unsold and needing to be disposed of.
A ton of produce looks unappetizing, goes bad and has to be thrown out.
a lot of that ugly produce is what goes into canning and pre-made products.
This is just supposition on my part based on personal experience, but it seems ever since the tariff bullshit started, the availability of quality produce has crashed for me in america, and not only are the “ugly” ones ending up on shelves now, but even damaged ones. . as if theres not enough produce coming in to to allow stores to be selective on what appears on shelves vs what goes into canning/etc.
I’ve noticed potatos are smaller, often heavily blemished, meaning I might get 2/3rds of a the weight of edible potato with 1/3rd going to scrap because of damage/etc.
Tomatos too, tend to be smaller, often bruised, and i’ve found rot inside more tomtatos since tariff bullshit started, than in all the decades before.
Carrots are thin, spindly, and barely have any crunch to them.
Lettuce is now giving everyone Trumparrhea
Onions, even worse than potatos, are blemished or mouldy, and I might be lucky to get half a pound of edible onion for every pound I buy.
and its same with everything else I’ve not mentioned in the produce section.
I imagine some of this may be regional as well, so that people on the opposite side of the country from me might not have the same experience.
I often go for the “ugly” produce, because i know others won’t. if it saves a bit of waste, then why not. Not like it tastes any differently.
This dude balanced the budget while increasing school funding and this? It’s almost like the DNC is full of thieves…
Nooo but how will the private grocery stores compete with this 😭😭😭
damn commies. Don’t they know that the big grocery stores need to make ANOTHER billion dollar profit? I mean, if the CEOs don’t buy those billion dollar yachts, who will? THINK OF THE YACHT COMPANIES!
Dude is the America that I want. TIL that America has municipal grocery stores.
My god, what kind of hellhole is this Communist turning NYC into?
The funniest headlines from NYP and Fox are simultaneously promoting socialist democrats and criticizing the DNC centrist they are aiming to replace lol.
Look at this guy. Finally, people who are able to bring together a broad front of the left, in order to actually fight. Who thunk it’d be an unapologetic “hardcore” socialist party that includes Marxist-Leninists, anarchists, social democrats, pro-electoral socialists, union socialists and even progressive liberals.
The fascists were able to effectively organize and seize power because they were able to bring together a front that included moderates, independents, white supremacists, randians, neo-Nazis and bible thumpers, all who disagreed on some level but found common ground on hatred, classism and selfish greed.
The fascists didn’t have popular support, though. They only won because it was a coup. The US is not a democracy.
Fix the election system, and we’ll get leftists in the White House.
True. And the DSA platform includes doing away with the senate. I’d also do away with the executive and have a prime minister appointed instead by congress. One person should not have their own cabinet with complete control of the administration of bureaucratic agencies. We could all benefit from a parliamentary system, especially with representation for DC, US territories, representatives from the collective of tribal nations and Puerto Rico.
Maybe we have a shot at catching up with the rest of the world, instead of remaining in the political Stone Age.
The fascists didn’t have popular support, though. They only won because it was a coup. The US is not a democracy.
Can you please clarify what you mean? While I agree with your conclusion, I don’t follow your two statements leading up to it, especially the coup part. Are you talking about the last presidential election or something else?
There are multiple lawsuits alleging fraud in the 2024 election, on the part of Trump, Elon and various republican factions
Thanks. I’ll have to read up on those allegations. The official counts appear to show that Trump received over 2 million more votes than Harris, so it seems to me any fraud to make this happen would have needed to be massive. We do have the electoral college system so I guess it’s possible that smaller efforts could have flipped the result, but we barely hear anything about any of this in the media. Given that, my first instinct to the idea that Trump’s win in 2024 was a coup is to think that it’s a liberal version of MAGA’s 2020 election fraud claims.
https://ballotpedia.org/Election_lawsuits_and_litigation,_2024
There were (are) a bunch of lawsuits about it. The DOJ being firmly in the hands of the Trump administration is actually one of the reasons many of these cases aren’t seeing light, not to mention all major media outlets are now owned by Trump supporters.
One I remember in particular were several counties in NY state where votes for a Dem senator were recorded, but NO votes for president were recorded. Many thousands of times.
The coup is in progress; and we won’t know if it succeeds or not until November I guess
Thanks for the link. I have no doubt that lawsuits fly with every election, especially national/presidential ones, but the main question for me would be how many more legitimate lawsuits were filed in response to 2024 compared to 2020, 2016, 2012? I have a hard time believing that there was widespread fraud and a coup this last election if nearly no one talks about it, not just in major media outlets but also non-major media, alternative media, social media. I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve seen this mentioned.
Well, Trump did say that his buddy Elon is very good with computers, including voting machines, and would ensure a victory… That alone should trigger an alarm bell
We also do need to convince normies we’re right
Normies are progressive. That’s my point.
They often are right up until you tell them they’re being progressive or you hit upon a topic they’ve been sufficiently propagandized against
Why do his backup singers look so grumpy?
This isn’t supposed to be snarky, by the way. I love what Mamdani’s doing, this is just about the photography and the editorial choice to use that photo instead of one three seconds later where they might be smiling
This guy has some style. Who would have thought serving the publics needs would play so well?
DNC, do you see any of this?
Yes but they can’t take bribes I mean free speech by serving constituents
you kidding? you can take a ton of bribes. you just can’t take them twice
I can’t WAIT to VOTE him OUT so I can pay MORE for Groceries again!
-LITERALLY Republican Voters!
Excuse me for wanting to be poor!
Not a Republican, but there is a lot of nuance.
He can sell groceries at a loss because the money comes from other places…all of which is eventually paid for in taxes (in this case there is probably a small resitribution from rich to poor which I am happy with).
I don’t mind Democrats getting caught helping their constituents. But let’s not pretend he found some cheap grocery loophole; grocery store are already incredibly efficient, they only make ~3% profit. I am just speculating that the logistics needed to spin up govt groceries is much larger than the existing ~3% markup from the private sector.
grocery stores are efficient for their owners, but not for food. grocery stores waste a lot of food. source: i used to eat grocery store dumpster food
If they were efficient for their owners, there profit would be a shit ton more than 3% of revenue.
Food dumping is its own issue. I bet the government grocery stores will have to follow the exact same laws.
The Piggly Wigley or the Bodega are not raking it in.
It’s true, the people who own the stores make barely anything.
We all know capitalists just help people out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s why America has free health care and no gun worries.
I would suggest you look up exactly what they make. Plenty of grocery stores are publicly traded companies. Go ask a bodega owner.
Ag/food production is already subsidized, so it’s not like buying from for profit stores eliminates social aspects of the industry. On the other side, what NYC is doing is removing CEOs with multimullion dollar comp packages from the equation.
The problem is we are only talking about grocery stores where the revenue is only about 3%. Ton of problems with Big Ag which as you said is heavily subsidized. I don’t mind the redistribution. I think it is great optics. But I just think it is ineffective, because grocery stores (only talking stores) are in fact very efficient already.
Concerns with this model.
- Scalping. What is preventing people from buying out the store in bulk and reselling outside the store for a profit.
- 30% of what? If private grocery stores drop their prices/profits to be competitive, will these municipal stores drop their prices again? I would think a set profit rate for a municipal store would cut out price gouging, but allow private grocery stores to continue operations.
- What are actual profit margins that grocery stores in the city are running on? Many articles say 1-3% profits are typical for grocery stores. Is this true for NYC?
- Is this expected to a budget expense or a self funded operation after the initial investment?
EDIT: To be clear I want this to succeed. Questioning the government’s implementation should be encouraged
The details aren’t all there yet, but potential options:
- scalping - put an upper limit order value or max number of an item in place. You can’t completely remove scalping, but if they can maintain stock, there isn’t a real need to go to a scalper.
- 30% of what is the current grocery price. If other stores drop their price then I would expect the price differential will drop but the objective will be met then.
- Odds are the municipal store won’t compete on every item, but more the essentials. I’d expect it to look more like an Aldi than a store with 60 options. Lower prices should cause higher turnover of perishable items and lower variety would minimize hitting expiration dates. Shrink is where a lot of profit is lost in grocery stores, so it’s a good thing to target. Municipal store should also be able to use some government beuracracy (food stamps, food banks) already in place to have lower overhead.
- it should be able to be self funded but realize it will likely start linking together food security programs (food stamps, wic) which would look like it is getting extra gov funding even though the tax burden wouldn’t change.
Scalping. What is preventing people from buying out the store in bulk and reselling outside the store for a profit.
Others can just go to the store.
30% of what?
One assumes these stores are not trying to generate profit. Logic implies that the prices are being compared to other stores.
Your other questions don’t interest me enough to look further, but I’m sure someone will.
Others can just go to the store
Other people going to the store doesn’t stop scalpers from clearing the shelves. If they restock overnight, scalpers can and do wait for stores to open just so they can clear them out.
Logic implies that the prices are being compared to other stores.
Imagine this scenario. Private grocery store (PGS) sells bread for $5 a loaf. Municipal grocery store (MGS) sells bread for $3.50. PGS decides to cut their profits margins (citation needed) and sell at a competitive $3.50. MSG sells bread at $2.75 (after all this is 70% of 3.50). This repeats until the PGS goes out of business and the operating cost of MSG is much higher than expected.
Stores are often easily able to put a limit per transaction. I don’t think a scalper is going to go through the till 500 times to clear the store of its 1000 jugs of milk limited to 2 per person.
I don’t think anybody is going to buy wholesale quantities of bootleg food at only slightly better cost than normal. If this one store runs out, there’s all the competitors that still have normal priced whatever it is.
Like this is like an elementary school math problem, this wont make a difference to the store if somebody buys 40 pies.
40 pies? That’s as many as four tens. And that’s terrible.
During the press conference a journalist asked the question on scalping and the EDC director said that they would have mechanisms in place to prevent it.
Scalping. What is preventing people from buying out the store in bulk and reselling outside the store for a profit.
You’re going to buy out all the lettuce and expect to move the volume of a grocery store on your lonesome? With all the labor of buying it out of their storefront, repacking, etc? If you want it that bad, go for it. Do you do this now, or something?
You simply underestimate how many people will be lining up to buy bootleg lettuce out of the back of a van so that they can save 10 cents off the for-profit store price while not having to suffer the indignity of going to the commie store. Only have to move a few tons a day to make a tidy profit, it’s easy money!
Even the Egyptian kings knew if they kept the populace fed, sheltered, and somewhat entertained that the public would do what they were told. Now with so many homeless and so many joining the ranks quickly they’re voice is being shut out by the same people who are causing famine, disease, and chaos in order to profit from it.
Mr. Mamdani is a student of history and realizes this, not so much because he wants to control the populace but because he’s a good person. He has a moral compass that points to “good” - for the good of all.
It’s literally bread and circuses. Meanwhile capitalism has decided to take away bread and jack up the price of circuses and they are surprised the people are turning on it. Thoughts and prayers don’t fill stomachs: actions do.
The only thing that can stop a primary candidate with a platform like Mamdani, is depressed Dem primary turnout…
The DNC chair didn’t endorse him in the primary, because this chair will never even glance at the scales during any primary.
But literal days after Mamdani became the candidate, he gave a PBS interview talking about how if Dems want to win, we need to run candidates like Mamdani.
We’ll get a fair primary with nothing holding us back, and voting in the Dem primary comes with zero obligations in the general. There is absolutely zero reason to stop voting in Dem primaries now. It’s more important than it’s ever been, because it’ll be the first fair one in at least 30 years.
But all the stuff Mamdani is doing in NYC today, can be done nationwide in just a couple years if we don’t give up right before the finish line of a marathon
Which upcoming dem primary are you referring to when you say “it’ll be the first fair one in at least 30 years”?
The only one the DNC is supposed to be involved in…
And in case you don’t know what that is because since slick Willy was in office (30 years ago) the neoliberals have kept their finger on the scal s and in all the pies:
The presidential primary
Got it, thanks. What leads you to believe that the neoliberals will not have their finger on the scales in the next presidential primary?
That the current DNC chair was the state party chair of Minnesota for a decade with a proven track record of doing so…
That the way the neoliberals controlled politicians and entire state parties was withholding funding thru the victory fund and the current chair has immediately and without strings dumped that money back on the state parties…
That the current DNC chair said Mamdani is the type of candidate we need for president both in policy and charisma…
And a bunch of other reasons.
Thanks. I guess I hadn’t been keeping an eye on the DNC over the last couple of years. I hope that this will pan out!
It already is…
The reason why we keep winning special election is with the funding from the DNC, everywhere has been operating at campaign levels for a year and a half.
Normally that’s only for 2 maybe 3 months before the general.
Trump controls the RNC, and if they give anyone money it’ll only be the most extreme maga candidates who are likely to lose.
The cards are dealt, we just haven’t laid them down yet.
Interesting, thanks. Does that mean that progressive candidates actually have a chance of getting DNC money or at least fair treatment this time around?
The neoliberals lost control of the DNC after the 2024 election.
Thanks. I wasn’t really aware of the DNS goings on, so it’s good to know.
Its important to see that candidates are winning by offering something to the voters. They aren’t running in orange man bad. They can feel that way, but it’s not why they are running
There are like a bajillion studies relating voter psychology and political preferences. If you want conservatives to vote you run on anger, holding onto what you have, fear of the other. You want the other side to vote, you have to present a vision of what’s possible.
By the same token, now is the time to promote this message of hope and action wherever you see it, and proactively address expressions of doom and defeat, however harmless they may seem. We all share responsibility for this to the extent that, taken together, these attitudes constitute a climate of action or inaction.
Now is not the time to give up and stay home, yet there are many currently in a state of deep hopelessness they feel compelled to spread. These comrades are effectively deactivated right now, and would deactivate others if only as a comfort to themselves, to validate their fear and justify their inaction. They don’t realize, or simply aren’t considering, how contagious and harmful it can be.
Edit: If you ever wondered what JFK meant by “fear itself,” wonder no further. We’re all living in such times.
Does anyone have a list of addresses for the grocery stores and their planned dates?
Eww. why? you must be one of those commie bastards that are… checks notes… just trying to survive :(
Also, in a more serious, i found this: “including the selection of the first two sites in East Harlem and Hunts Point;” on here: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani-unveils-30--discount---including-all-produce--all-
I like this guy.
