Candidate Touts New Model For Grocery Stores

New York City’s next big idea in urban planning? Government-run grocery stores—courtesy of self-declared communist and current NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani’s bold plan to combat food prices includes opening five taxpayer-funded grocery stores, which he claims will undercut “corporate supermarkets” and eliminate price gouging. The problem? The entire financial foundation of the plan is built on a misreading of a website infographic.

Yes, seriously.

Mamdani, in multiple public statements and campaign videos, has insisted the city is handing out $140 million in subsidies to private grocery chains through the FRESH initiative, a city program aimed at encouraging grocery access in underserved areas. His plan is to take half of that supposed $140 million and redirect it toward city-owned alternatives—$60 million of which would go to the launch of five government-run stores.

Except there’s a glaring issue: the city isn’t spending $140 million. That figure refers almost entirely to private sector investment, not taxpayer dollars.

What Mamdani read as municipal subsidies is, in reality, capital investment by the very grocery chains he criticizes. The city’s actual contribution to FRESH is around $3.3 million per year in the form of tax abatements and regulatory incentives—pennies on the dollar compared to what Mamdani assumed.

This is a bit embarrassing.
Mamdani has a plan for paying for his city-owned grocery stores. He’s planning to tap into a $140 million pile of subsidies for “corporate grocery stores.”
But that pile of money doesn’t exist. He just misread a government website. (Link in reply) pic.twitter.com/sI2TTh3aB1

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) July 1, 2025

According to The Washington Examiner, it would take 42 years for New York City to even reach $140 million in tax breaks at the current pace. Worse, those modest incentives are what attract private businesses to underserved neighborhoods in the first place. Eliminate the tax breaks, and the incentive—and investment—disappears along with them.

So, the cornerstone of Mamdani’s campaign? It’s based on a flawed understanding of a graphic. A misread number. A gross misunderstanding of public-private financing. In short, a math error.

This isn’t just a small misstep—it’s a crystal-clear preview of what you get when ideological fantasy overrides basic economic literacy. Mamdani promises to replace private industry with government-run operations in one of the most complex, high-cost markets in the country—without understanding how the current system works or where the money comes from.

If it weren’t real, it would be satire. But it is real, and it reflects a growing trend among far-left urban planners who believe government ownership is a silver bullet for rising costs, even if it’s propped up by phantom funding and broken arithmetic.

At this point, New Yorkers will have to ask themselves: do they want real leadership—or do they want a crash course in socialist economics, brought to you by a man who can’t read a line item?

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