Groceries
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:
Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office recently hosted an all-day continuing legal education program titled, “Price, Access, and Power: Exploring Grocery Costs, Food Access, and Competition.” Several speakers advocated for breaking up grocery retailers and establishing government grocery stores in areas that don’t have them, such as high crime zones and Indian reservations.
A leading candidate for mayor of New York City favors government-operated grocery stores (and you know whatever they get, Minneapolis must have).
The next Democrat crusade is food. They want to take over your grocery store and run it “fairly,” you know, like the Post Office or the DMV.
Thomas Sowell quipped, “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.” This sounds like more of that.
I just have one question. After Democrats have made private grocery stores unprofitable and replaced them with government grocery stores, what happens to consumers when AFSCME goes on strike??
Joe Doakes, Wal-Mart Grocery shopper
If government groceries work as well as government schools, we’ll have a raft of remedial programs and consultants and…
…aaaah. I get it now.
June 26th, 2025 at 6:47 am
This could actually be a good thing. If grocery supplies become as whimsical and random as mail delivery, maybe people would learn to stock up instead of panic buying. A nation of preppers – imagine it!
June 26th, 2025 at 9:40 am
Oh opportunity knocks!!
Govt ownership of the distribution & delivery of groceries will necessarily require a Garden Equalization Tax And Inspections to compensate for the supply chain anomalous waste caused by people with back yard gardens. Think of all those Govt Tomatoes rotting because people grew their own. The Garden Inspectors will be needed to make sure that folks are only growing what they can eat and NOT providing food to their neighbors, possibly at a (gasp) Profit.
June 26th, 2025 at 9:41 am
Moderation?
Fuck AKISMET!
June 26th, 2025 at 10:40 am
Spot on Mr. Doakes.
June 26th, 2025 at 11:39 am
One would have hoped that after the history of Communism, with its attendant starvation, bread lines, and endemic shortages, even the most liberal people would say “That’s something we don’t want to try.”. For that matter, anyone familiar with the consequences of rent control and public housing might say “You know, maybe Adam Smith had a point that some goods are public goods, and others are not.”
But even more to the point, I took a look at Google maps of grocery stores in Gotham City, and there really aren’t very many areas where a decent grocery store isn’t within about a mile. So there is really no need, and even the worst grocery stores will start to carry things like produce if people actually buy it.
June 26th, 2025 at 12:19 pm
Entire generations have
grown upcome of age without seeing the notion of government-run grocery stores like in the USSR and its satellite states.Hardly unexpected, considering the Left’s hold on public education.
June 26th, 2025 at 4:13 pm
Government grocery stores…….. Hmmmm…….
Wait until the foodie elites stock them with sh*t that no one can bear to eat.
WHAT? No junk food? Where be my skittles?
June 26th, 2025 at 4:43 pm
The thing about access and affordability – the liberals do not really understand it. They’re too scared to actually go into urban core areas to find out that the WalMart, the McDonald’s, the gas station – any of those supposedly evil places are actually the affordable, accessible places for food and groceries for many people in the urban core and rural areas. But, the liberals get so proud of themselves when they chase away or close down one of those places in a neighborhood where they would never live anyway, and then expect to be patted on the back, bowed down to as saviors when they have “meetings” about food access and affordability.
June 26th, 2025 at 8:36 pm
I remember when the Minneapolis City Council required Convenience Stores to carry fresh fruit because they were located in a Food Desert. The apples and bananas just rotted on the counter. Almost none of it ever sold. Rumor was several gas station owners replaced the fresh stuff with fake fruit behind the counter to fool a casual inspection. I never heard of anyone getting ticketed for that offense.
June 26th, 2025 at 9:58 pm
Make private grocery stores unprofitable? Never happen. Kinda like healthcare…..if you have the means, you choose a better plan rather than the public option because you want the better product.
But hey, if you want the gov to pay for everything, then you take what you get. So go for it…..all it will do is illustrate why capitalism is still the best system.
June 27th, 2025 at 11:54 am
This from an article just a couple years ago:
“But what’s happening in Erie, Kansas, (and what could happen on a larger scale in Chicago) is a useful reminder that the folly of government-run grocery stores is sadly not a historical relic like the USSR.” https://reason.com/2023/10/23/government-run-grocery-store-is-predictably-losing-money/
June 28th, 2025 at 4:07 pm
A more nuanced approach would be to look at other government run enterprises. Government run liquor stores have traditionally lost money. So have government run marijuana dispensaries. And let’s not forget when the federal government attempted to run the Mustang Ranch, a notorious whorehouse, to recoup taxes owed. The government lost money.
Government run grocery stores will work! Tell that fairy tale to children and simpletons.
June 29th, 2025 at 7:23 am
Wait’ll the gubmint grocers demand that farmer’s markets and neighborhood gardens be stopped in the name of equity.
July 1st, 2025 at 9:34 am
JayDee, agreed that government run enterprises almost always run deficits when honest accounting is used, I’ve seen a number of cases where the enterprise “runs a profit” because things like depreciation and foregone tax revenue are not counted. Yeah, you’d be put in jail if you did that doing accounting for any private business, but this is government hiding its failures.