Zohran Mamdani has somehow managed to make his plan for five city-run grocery stores even worse. On Wednesday, a senior official overseeing its implementation revealed that, to ensure local grocers are not driven out by the city’s subsidized stores, the city may pay those businesses for the revenue they lose. 

Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan immigrant, Manhattan Institute fellow, and economist who watched similar policies unfold in his home country, called the plan “tragic.” As he put it, the essence of Mamdani’s socialism is taking taxpayers’ money to build something nobody asked for, then taking even more to solve the problem the city created. The real solution, he said, is much simpler: cut taxes and leave more money in the pockets of New Yorkers.

"Well, it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic, right? Because they're really stealing our money. They're finding—You know, socialists are always the best at finding new ways to steal our money, to solve problems that they created by stealing more of our money in the first place," Di Martino said. "And that's what they're doing here."

They're taking $30 million to create a government grocery store that nobody asked for, that nobody needs, because there are plenty of grocery stores in the city, that is going to be subsidized at a 30 percent discount. Obviously, there's going to be shortages. Obviously, it's going to take business away from other places. It's not targeted towards the poor. And instead of saying, we're going to cut your taxes, maybe your property taxes, your income taxes, no, we're going to create yet another government grant program that you need to apply for, that the friends get first. 

"This is how socialism works," he added. "And the grocery stores haven't opened in the first place yet."

Mamdani’s plan for five city-run grocery stores, one in each borough, has become more absurd with every new announcement. New Yorkers first learned they could be asked to spend tens of millions of dollars to build stores in city-owned buildings. Then the administration announced that some goods would be sold at a 30 percent markdown. In an industry where profit margins typically run between one and four percent, private grocers cannot realistically compete with a taxpayer-subsidized rival selling products at those prices. 

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Then came the latest twist. To keep local businesses from being wiped out by the city’s own stores, officials have floated spending even more taxpayer money to compensate those businesses for the losses government created.

This is the beauty of Mamdani’s plan: government creates a problem, then announces a new government program to fix it. And when that program creates another problem, presumably New Yorkers will get a third program, plus another bill. 

Mamdani once proudly insisted that socialism is needed to clean up the free market’s mistakes. But his grocery-store scheme has already reached the point where socialism must rescue local businesses from socialism. Apparently the plan is not a grocery store at all, it is an endlessly expanding taxpayer-funded death spiral, with City Hall creating more and more damage and then congratulating itself for offering to clean it up.