by WorldTribune Staff, August 3, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
Critics have called New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores a socialist fantasy.
Hizzoner has promised that New Yorkers who shop at the stores will enjoy 30% savings on all meat, all produce, and pantry staples. The stores are being built on government-owned property.
The first of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores is scheduled to open in late 2027 in the Bronx. / X
Adam Lehodey, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News Digital that “the 30% savings that Mamdani announced on his government-owned stores are an illusion” because taxpayers will cover millions in subsidies while the stores sit rent-free on government land.
New Yorkers, Lehodey said, will still pay the full price, just indirectly, through their tax bill instead of at the checkout line.
Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler wrote in a post to X that “not only will New York taxpayers pay $70 million to build government-run grocery stores – they will also pay subsidies in perpetuity to keep them afloat while funding unfair competition against legitimate small businesses. One more problem with socialism: you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Then there are issues of social justice: Will Mamdani and his comrades at City Hall ensure that only New Yorkers are shopping at the government-run grocery stores?
At a recent press conference, Jeanny Pak, the Interim President & CEO of NYC Economic Development Corporation, said the grocery stores will use a library-card-like ID system because the socialists running the show want to make sure it is New Yorkers truly in need buying up the discounted groceries and not others who intend to re-sell them.
“We are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be [through] a sort of a library card-esque [system], and also, we manage who’s buying and that it’s focused on everyday New Yorkers,” Pak said. “So, we are mindful of that, and we’re going to make sure that we have all the things in place to ensure that that does not happen.”
Breitbart’s John Nolte noted:
Mamdani wants government to take over the means of production, which is the very definition of communism. He’s starting with food because, hey, who doesn’t support cheap food? Food is necessary to life. No one wants anyone to go hungry. It’s a pretty smart first move on his part. Ah, but what about reality…? Such as…
The reality of how this will undercut privately-owned grocery stores. Yeah, well, that’s the plan, dumbass. If people can buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, they are going to buy groceries 30 percent cheaper from the government, and this will (by design) decimate privately-owned grocery stores that operate on profit margins below five percent.
These privately-owned stores will go out of business. Then Mamdani will replace them with more government-run stores, which will push even more privately-owned stores out of business, which means even more government-run stores, and so on and so on and so on, until the government is in charge of feeding the people and if the people defy the government, those people don’t eat.
Then there’s the reality brought up by the reporter’s question, which is what to do about people who will take advantage of a system so easily taken advantage of by purchasing groceries at 30 percent below retail, turning around, and reselling those items?
See, that could ruin Mamdani’s Communist plot, so suddenly a government ID is necessary to avoid fraud, to avoid people taking advantage.
After realizing what they put out there, that the socialist mayor was going to require ID to shop at the city-run stores, City Hall quickly went into damage control.
A spokesman for Mamdani, Cassio Mendoza, told The New York Sun that the card system is only about inventory management, not residency or identification requirements.
“To be absolutely clear: NYC Grocery stores will be open to everyone. There will be no system to verify identity, residency, or income, and no one will be asked to show ID to shop,” Mendoza said.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Mamdani is a member, has denounced voter ID requirements as “racist” and a form of “voter suppression.”
Mendoza told the Sun that the “library card” for the city-run grocery stores will function more like a “loyalty card system.”
“This is not an identification system, nor is it a mechanism to verify who someone is, where they live, or how much they earn. It is a practical inventory management tool to ensure affordable groceries remain available for the people who need them instead of being cleared off shelves for resale.”
