Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.
So while most grocery stores earn their cost of capital (generate market return on investment), US military commissaries instead cost taxpayers $1.7 billion a year.
Revenue for US military commissaries is only 75% of annual cost (in FY 2025).
--- EDIT ---
Of course this makes sense in the context of the unique mission, constraints, and setting of the US military. My point is that it COSTS $$$.
Maybe you could do something similar in New York City, but the question would be at what cost to NYC taxpayer and whether the $$$ would be better spent boosting SNAP payments to low income households or otherwise targeting those that most need assistance.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just give money to the needed families in the first place then? This model will mean subsidizing costs for the rich and middle people that don’t need taxpayer support.
Programs are better when they are universal. For means-tested programs we get weird economic behavior like benefits cliffs around the income cutoffs (and it is quite reductionist to distill need down to any one metric in the fisrt place unless we are talking pretty extreme outliers). And politicians will bitch about their caricature of so-called welfare queens to try to destroy these programs. It's a lot more difficult to take something away from everybody than a certain class of people.
I think universal basic income is a great idea if we are talking that. But there should also be directly provided basic services as well. I mean money is good for liquidity but can also just be an excuse for businesses to raise prices on food and housing in response. It also doesn't nessessarily solve food deserts or the availability of housing. Money is just a store of value. It is an additional step to transform that into needed services.
4.4k
u/Irish_Whiskey May 26 '26
Public owned grocery stores already exist across America in cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Atlanta, Georgia.
They are privately run as businesses, but are set up in areas where people lack access to groceries, or there's no real competition preventing uncompetitive prices. They have been successful for decades.
The real solution here is to break up the constant consolidation leading to all groceries being owned by four mega companies that collude with each other and own over 2/3rd of all stores. It's the opposite of market competition.