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Chad Mamdani moment as usual - don't worry about how your enemies see you. Worry about how your potential allies see you!
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this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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Pragmatic Leftist Theory
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The neolibs are too far right. The tankies are doing whatever that is. Where's the space for the people who want fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism, but realize that it's gonna take a while and there are lots of steps between now and then? Here. This is that space.
Here, people should endeavor to discuss and devise practical, actionable leftist action. Vote lesser evil while you build grassroots coalitions. Unionize your workplace. Participate in SRAs. Build cohesion your local community. Educate the proletariat.
This is a place for practical people to develop practical plans to implement stable, incremental improvement.
If you're dead-set on drumming up all 18,453 True Leftists® into spontaneous Revolution, go somewhere else. The grown ups are talking.
Rules:
-1. Don't be a dick. Racism, sexism, other assorted bigotries, you know the drill. At least try to default to mutually respectful discussion. We're all on the same side here, unless you aren't, in which case kindly leave.
-2. Don't be a tankie. Yes I'm sure you have an extensive knowledge of century-old theory. There's been a century of history since then. Things didn't shake out as expected, maybe consider the possibility that a different angle of attack might be more effective in light of new data.
-3. Be practical. No one on the left benefits from counterproductive actions. This is a space informed by, not enslaved to, ideology. Promoting actions that are fundamentally untenable in the system in question, because they fulfill a sense of ideological purity, is a bad look. Don't do that.
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So subsidized food?
Don’t be dense. Food is already subsidized in multiple ways, but those subsidies go into corporate profit margins. This store offers the benefits of subsidy to the common person.
Don’t be dense yourself. I‘m just asking a question.
I would like to know more about these groceries store plans. Apparently you don’t know anything specific.
Don’t change the subject. You didn’t ask for details. You said “so subsidized food?”, which is pointing out the obvious. Seems like you’re here to continue arguing instead of just googling the answer, so I’ll fetch the info for you and anyone else who might be curious:
…
Source: AMNY.com.
I, for one, learned something from this response. Thank you for posting it. You've saved maybe dozens of people from having to search themselves.
Oh god the terror of searching for information myself
SEO spam makes searching hit or miss. I might search for a policy description and get clickbait opinion pieces. It's a hassle that I'm happy to avoid if someone else does it for me, especially for something that I care only vaguely about.
Thanks for actually answering.
Then why are you asking Lemmy instead of a search engine? Or just reading the mayor's platform?
If you're looking for specifics, you could have short circuited this whole thread by typing your original comment into a search engine, instead of posting it in a discussion forum
https://www.amny.com/news/how-mamdanis-city-run-grocery-plan-would-work/
Oh no asking questions on a discussion forum, what have discussion forums come to?
If you really just wanted information, you wouldn't be so confrontational right now.
Huh? People are hurling abuse at me for asking a simple short question.
They most certainly are not.
I think people aren't hurling abuses at you for just asking a question. It's more that your original comment "Why does he want a city run grocery store?" sounds like you didn't even spend 1 second to think about the question yourself.
why would anybody want a city run grocery store? what could possibly be the reason? is it maybe sothat the city can better control what the grocery store does? such as setting food prices? on a politics platform that specifically promised cheaper cost of living for the people? hmmm ...
if you had just guessed some response to your own question and then asked for confirmation, i guess people would respond more empathically, as you would have shown that you even thought about this topic for 10 seconds yourself.
this way, it takes you 2 seconds to write the question and other people 5 minutes to write a well-balanced answer, which is just mean and unfair to them.
People are hurling "abuse" at you because you're acting like a giant fucking asshole in a public space.
If I were you, I'd feel lucky that you're safely online and acting like this within arm's reach of people.
You did not want a discussion. You wanted someone to spoon feed you information.
He wanted to state republican/centrist talking points, but thought that putting a question mark at the end gave him cover.
That shit was old when Glenn Beck was still relevant.
You are free to ignore my posts.
I'm also free to call out disingenuous and lazy people
For some reason I've got this samsara person tagged as "Israeli apologist".
I can't be bothered to look as to why I've tagged them this way, but there must be a reason as I only use the tag function for legitimate reasons.
JuSt AsKiNg QuEsTiOnS
only one you responded to was someone reacting negatively, yah your not good at hiding your bad faith.
“Just asking questions” can very easily come across in a way that you didn’t intend. Perhaps you were genuinely curious, but more often than not jumping into a controversial topic it can come across not as genuine curiosity and willingness to know more, but instead more like:
https://medium.com/westenberg/nobody-who-says-theyre-just-asking-questions-actually-wants-an-answer-5f4cee4d74d4
You really can't be bothered to spend 30 seconds googling something?
if they hadn't asked the question, we wouldn't have this discussion and i wouldn't have bothered to even learn something about this topic. so i learned about the project in more detail than if it had only been mentioned in a headline and i forgot to search for it myself.
The only two nations in the entire world that voted in the UN against a resolution to recognise food as a human right were... the USA and Isreal.
STOP spreading these LIES! The USA and Israel are ONE Country!
How is some symbolic UN Resolution relevant to groceries in New York?
It's not, it's relevant to the asinine aversion most Americans have to the idea.
Non-profit food. Huge difference.
And if the city owns the land, there will also be significant cost savings long-term in rent and property tax.
No, it's run at cost, but what's so wrong about subsidizing food at the consumer level? We already do it for the owners of megafarms.
Do you live every day in terror of poor people being able to eat?
Subsidies can make sense if other policies don’t work, sure.
Well, good news then. Supply-side economics has failed.
It's not subsidized if it runs at cost.
Imagine how much 'profits' is absorbed by shareholders that could've went back to the public.
Groceries are a low margin business.
If you're thinking that means government run grocery stores are unrealistic keep in mind that they already exist for the military. They're called commissaries and they sell groceries for significantly cheaper prices than private grocery stores, but they are open only to service-members and their families. We are perfectly capable of providing robust social services, but the state wants to keep it exclusive so they have an incentive for people living in poverty to join the military.
It mostly means government run doesn’t necessarily mean cheaper.
Grocery chains have huge economies of scale and sophisticated automated management of stocks, ordering, deliveries driving costs down.
A handful of government shops will likely have more overhead costs and inefficiencies than for example ALDI.
I’m not against government run shops or serving underserved communities at all. However the government doing it doesn’t mean it’s cheaper overall.
Also keep mind that some of the underserved areas have high crime rates, which is one reason for commercial business to stay away. A government run grocery store would likely need to also pay for extra security measures or guards.
US military commissaries are also cheaper because there‘s no sales tax. Of course the scale also help. Do you know if military commissaries operate at a loss or break even?
This video by More Perfect Union talks about them at length. If I remember right, it is literally required by law to be cheaper overall (25% savings across the board) with a default pricing of cost plus 1% and a variable pricing model where common staples like eggs and milk are sold at a loss and it's made up for on more niche items. They're tax-subsidized through the military, and it's an incredibly tiny portion of the budget. Some locations operate at a loss but they're not allowed to close any stores so that's why they need the subsidies.
So in short, yes, government run shops are cheaper because they're tax-subsidized, and are not required to profit or even break even. Personally I don't see any problem with government operating grocery stores at a loss to provide the working class with affordable groceries and having the rich foot the bill. In fact, I'd say that's the whole point.
Sounds sensible
Sounds like a good argument for more government run grocery stores.
We've seen that in a lot of cases, corporate-run means not present at all.
More reason to remove drain revenue.
Ah, the Mossad shill at it again...
If that's what you want to call "ensuring working class people have access to food", then yeah, sure, subsidized food.