Plenty of red states have government run liquor stores. And army bases have government run grocery stores along with government run everything else. I don't see the problem here. Progressive version presumably would be free groceries for everyone.
When I lived in Pennsylvania, the state-run liquor stores had a monopoly on selling wine and liquor. This survived Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.
Mamdani’s proposed grocery stores aren’t a monopoly. Whether they’re a good idea remains to be seen, but they’d be competing against privately owned grocery stores. As I understand them, they’re mostly intended for areas without a local grocery store (food deserts), which seems like a reasonable thing to explore.
Hi, that's not why people go to Delaware for those kind of purchases. It's the lack of tax.
The actual MSRP from PA wine and liquor stores is very competitive, since it's one of the largest single buyers of alcohol. Selection could be better though.
Note that they don't have to be a monopoly to cause a problem. Usually the way things go is these state-run grocery stores get subsidies. The goal is to provide food in food deserts, not to be profitable. Over time the subsidy inevitably grows meaning higher taxes for non-gov grocery stores. This leads to a cycle where the state-run stores pushes out the corp-run stores with the thinnest margins.
Ultimately only the bougie grocery stores remain in rich neighborhoods and now you have to really hope that you can continue funding those state-run stores or you just made the food desert problem a whole lot worse.
Highly disagree. The commissary on most military bases are awesome. Spent most of my life going there with my parents. Not sure where you heard they were bad. Never got that impression from any military serving people, like ever.
Now imagine how the commissary would turn out if instead of being placed in a spot where any commercial business would love to exploit (center of military base where every family has employment, a process for permanently kicking out people who engage in major crime, and private competition controlled unless you go through a security checkpoint) -- instead you put them in many of the places I witnessed food deserts in major US cities that had underemployment, elevated crime, outsiders afraid to enter during the day and ~never enter at night, bars on every window, and every other establishment has you slide your cash in a rotating tray adjacent to a bulletproof window.
I feel like the commissary these days is really far behind private grocers. Yeah, 15 or 25 years ago they were awesome, but now it just resembles a poorly stocked (and much smaller) Walmart. Regional grocers have gotten really good in my lifetime. Used to go to the commissary regularly to save money and have a good selection, but those days are just long past. Same deal with base liquor stores, they are merely "OK", but again your regional private option is just so much nicer in the 2020s.
You suggested that this is good because it is similar to a thing, and many people pointed out that thing you compared it to is bad. That is not goalpost shifting, that is you demonstrating that this is in fact bad.
> They’re hardly mainstream if everyone hates them.
I think maybe you and I have different definitions for the word "mainstream". To me it has nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with what is normal and everyday.
The prices are usually higher than private stores, the merchandising is worse, the selection is usually bad, and they're generally just a miserable shopping experience. Compare them to a nice wine and liquor store in states where those are allowed and the difference is quite apparent. They also never have staff that know anything about the products which is just a shitty DMV like experience.
Other than merchandising (why is that important?) nothing you describe is an issue with the Idaho liquor stores.
Prices are pretty in line with market rates. The selection is really pretty good. The shopping experience is the same as any other store (what makes a shopping experience "miserable?")
> Compare them to a nice wine
In Idaho, wine is allowed to be sold in grocery stores and specialty shops. The liquor stores are for hard beverages.
> They also never have staff that know anything about the products
Staff seems just fine with the products. But again, don't see why that's important in general.
> just a shitty DMV like experience.
I don't really know what you mean by this. You go in, find the booze you like, pay for it at the register, or ask a clerk a question if you have one (Do you have a lot of questions purchasing alcohol? Every time?) If you want a more expensive experience you can go to a wine shop in Idaho and let someone blow smoke up your ass about the notes.
Look, Idaho might just be particularly good at running a booze shop, but I doubt it. It may be that because Idaho only has liquor stores for hard alcoholic beverages it's made for a better experience all around. It certainly doesn't suffer from selection, knowledge, or experience problems. I think the only issue you might take is that it's just sorted shelves of alcohol with little flashy theming.
That's because liquor stores originated from an earlier incarnation of the culture wars. That was a long time ago, and I don't think anyone seriously believes in that justification now, but the inertia remains.
> I think that's a pretty good reason for them to exist even today.
Only if you think the government should be telling people what to buy and what not to buy. I personally find that highly objectionable, particularly given the outsized power of primary voters in most places.
But why? Liquor is the cause for a very high portion of police, insurance (property and health), and other costs that can’t be translated into dollars.
Why shouldn’t society recoup some of those costs from the users? And why should society subsidize those costs?
It’s interesting that it was politically acceptable to charge tobacco users more for health insurance, but not politically acceptable to charge alcohol users more for health insurance.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. The context of profit is money which shareholders are entitled to after accounting for the costs of their business. None of those things apply to government.
Also, New Hampshire does not have sales tax on certain goods and services. Hotel rooms and car rentals, for example, do have sales tax. And apparently, alcohol sold at the state alcohol stores.
>Sorry, I don't agree with that. The context of profit is money which shareholders are entitled to after accounting for the costs of their business. None of those things apply to government.
I have to disagree. In a very real sense, the residents of a political entity are the stakeholders within that political boundary and, at least in a democratic (small 'd') society, those stakeholders are, in fact, the owner/shareholders of that political entity.
That's neither very profound nor much of an intellectual stretch. Although, apparently you disagree. Why is that?
> I have to disagree. In a very real sense, the residents of a political entity are the stakeholders within that political boundary and, at least in a democratic (small 'd') society, those stakeholders are, in fact, the owner/shareholders of that political entity.
That still doesn’t mean it makes sense to categorize government income as “profit” (for the purposes of this discussion trying to discern whether or not NH taxes alcohol).
Governments and businesses have (or are supposed to have) different priorities, and are (theoretically) structured so that in exchange for the government being given a monopoly on violence for those who don’t pay, the government (ideally) is working towards providing services that benefit all of society, for the long term.
The New Hampshire government’s website linked above even states:
> $146m Annual Contribution To The General Fund
What difference does it make if the tax is not separated out like alcohol taxes in most other states? The bottom line is New Hampshire could be selling alcohol for less, but it chooses not to in order to use the extra money to fund government services. That is a tax.
>What difference does it make if the tax is not separated out like alcohol taxes in most other states? The bottom line is New Hampshire could be selling alcohol for less, but it chooses not to in order to use the extra money to fund government services. That is a tax.
Is people drinking alcohol a loss for society? Because the thing is, society needs to continue to produce children in order to continue existing. It's called a social lubricant for a reason, and while it is exceeding obvious that alcohol abuse is a problem, that's exactly why the state runs the liquor stores. To limit products available and limit hours to ideally prevent the worst of abuses. So the unanswerable question is, how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for? If it were successfully banned (using magic) would civilization survive past the end of the incoming generation? Given alcohol's ubiquity on all corners of the globe, I don't think that's decided or even decidable.
As we're only considering children being born, the health effects of alcohol while pregnant are known, (aka fetal alcohol syndrome) but since they're known, they can be dismissed if we assume pregnant mothers aren't drinking. The other thing we can discount is the long term health effects of alcohol consumption. Yes there are health ramifications, but as long as people are able to create healthy babies, what happens later on in life is less relevant to the question of making babies, which civilization needs in order to continue.
>how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for?
If this is alluding to unplanned pregnancies, that is almost unheard of nowadays due to access to IUDs/morning after pill/abortion.
Whether or not alcohol, or specifically hard alcohol, plays a material role in establishing relationships that otherwise would not happen is difficult to discern, but I don't see why an alcohol tax (or even just higher liquor taxes) would dissuade people. It only takes a few drinks to become "buzzed", so any tax would only be material to heavy drinkers.
I don't see how a government run liquor store limits abuse, and most seem to offer the same products as any other store (does it really make a difference above a certain proof?). And many states limit hours that alcohol is sold without having government run stores.
I was referring to alcohol as a social lubricant leading to relationships leading to children. If we look to Asia, and at South Korea and Japan's issues with existentially low birth rates, the question flips. From "would an alcohol tax possibly dissuade people from hooking up" to "what can the government do to help more babies be born", and under that framing, subsidizing alcohol to everyone of baby making age starts to look almost reasonable.
As far state run liquor stores dissuading alcoholism, Scandinavian countries state-run their liquor stores for that expressed reason. Their hours are intentionally bad, the products expensive and small. No 1.75 L handles of 80 proof vodka to be found. It's mostly effective, but it's also not New England where if you just drive for an hour or two, you can hit multiple states and jurisdictions with different blue laws, limiting the effectiveness of state run stores.
What state run stores, ostensibly force, is better adherence with the law. The corner shop where you've gone to for twenty years and are friends with the owner, is totally just gonna give you beer Sunday morning when it's illegal to do so, but record it in the system on Monday. A bit harder to do in a state run store with more oversight. Also, it's harder to import prohibited kinds of alcohol with said. oversight vs a privately run store. As with any law though, it's not 100% effective, but that's not a reason to not have a law.
I have fond memories of the Navy commissary my parents did most of our food shopping at when I was growing up. Huge variety of reasonably priced goods.
I was in the Navy and I loved the on-base grocery store. A big part of it was that I was overseas and it felt like home, but also the prices were great, it was clean, and had a decent selection.
I would say that state-run liquor stores and subsidized city-run grocery stores such as what Mamdani proposes are not at all comparable. The former is a giant cash cow - a profit center while the latter is an entitlement program i.e a mandatory budget expense. To give an idea of the amount of money involved in state-run liquor stores, consider the state of New Hampshire's report from last year:
>"In FY2024, total income before transfers was $144.7 million with the total net profit transfer of $140.0 million. Of the $140.0 million, the Liquor Commission transferred $122.0 million to the General Fund"[1]
Why does a government ran entity need to be a huge money maker?
NYC has a $6B cop budget. They even have subs. Yet nobody worries about that. A grocery store could be ran at a deficit. More than likely it will be neutral or will turn a slight profit.
>"More than likely it will be neutral or will turn a slight profit."
Based on what exactly, just your opinion? Obviously you know nothing about the grocery business which is a notoriously low-margin business, between 1-3%. The only way that large grocers like Krogers and Albertsons are profitable is purely based on volume. You also realize that groceries are perishable items right? You also realize these are labor and energy inensive operations right? And that there's tons of competition? And of course shrinkage. There is zero chance that it would operate at a profit or break even. By the way it's been tried before look up Baldwin, Florida or Erie, Kansas for examples of city-run grocery failures. There are others as well.
Lastly, nothing about any of this in any way comparable to NYPD as a budgetary item. Comparing retail food to public safety is just really bizarre.
Baldwin and Erie were both in small towns. I can't find any information on Erie, but Baldwin ultimately saw a $100->$200k yearly shortfall for a city of 1400.
If they wanted to accommodate that shortfall, then that translates to a $150 yearly tax burden per person. They instead chose to shutter the store.
The stores lost money in both cities, but in the process baldwin sold over $1M in produce breaking even at least once.
> There is zero chance that it would operate at a profit or break even.
The Baldwin example shows that breaking even is definitely possible. And for a city with the population density of NY, it's probably easier to pull off. It's certainly easier to support these stores if there's a shortfall.
> Lastly, nothing about any of this in any way comparable to NYPD as a budgetary item. Comparing retail food to public safety is just really bizarre.
But it is. The NYPD is simply overfunded. They can buy toys and tanks while paying the cops to catch people jumping turnstiles and play candy crush.
A pretty small fraction of the NYPD budget could cover shortfalls. That's why it's brought up. These grocery stores, even if they never turn a profit, won't be costing the city $100M, or $10M. They likely won't even shortfall to $1M. For a city with a budget of billions, adding 1M in is really just a drop in bucket.
And in the process, such a grocery store will help far more people than the average NYPD cop does.
>A pretty small fraction of the NYPD budget could cover shortfalls. That's why it's brought up. These grocery stores, even if they never turn a profit, won't be costing the city $100M, or $10M. They likely won't even shortfall to $1M. For a city with a budget of billions, adding 1M in is really just a drop in bucket.
This. A city with not just a budget of "billions" but of USD$116 billion[0].
Even if each of the five pilot stores required USD$1 million in subsidies, that's 0.0000431% of the city budget or USD$0.61 per NY resident. We're definitely going bankrupt over that right?
And if it results in the poorest NYers getting access to cheaper, healthier food, that's good for business (healthier people work more), education (healthier people learn better), healthcare (healthier people consume less healthcare), quality of life (reasonably priced healthy food allows folks to live better lives) and a host of other benefits.
As a NYC resident, I'm happy to give the poorest folks in the city $0.61 a year or even $2.00 a year. Isn't $0.61 a reasonable price to pay for making the lives of thousands of your neighbors demonstrably better?
Government runs a lot of businesses alongside private estates. Postal is the biggest example. Why is this super unusual? I don't know if it's middle of the road, but I don't think it's socialism.
Progressive ideas would be price controls on groceries to curb inflation, or seizing the means of production by making a major stake in a major food chain.
(side note: I think it's hilarious that Trump is doing this with Intel and potentially Tiktok and few have labeled it as such).
I disagree that it's even socialism as NYC isn't outlawing or using the emoluments clause to take control of private stores. It isn't ceasing the means of production in any sense.
The Mamdani plan is to put in stores where no stores exist. That's just a city ran store. Something that used to be pretty common in the US.
I think you mean "eminent domain" – the emoluments clause prohibits government officials from accepting gifts, payments, or titles from foreign states.
Stores exist there. They have some foodstuffs even. They have bars on all the window and your money is handed through a rotating tray under a bulletproof glass with tiny holes in it so you can talk to the cashier (who also has a shotgun resting under their cash register).
That is because that is the viable model in those areas to actually run a store without having your staff egregiously injured/assaulted and not have everything not nailed down stolen.
This ends up getting reflected also in higher prices of foods in those areas, to reflect the cost and lower supply of those willing to take those measures. So people will call it a 'food desert' -- not because you can't get food there (though it mostly sucks and is shelf stable stuff) but because nothing there resembling a walk-around middle-class grocery store exists.
Failing to take those measures, or taking the measures and not raising prices enough to cover the costs, will likely end up in the state losing money, that is, they will be forced to seize the capital of private citizens to fund the state's commercial offerings.
Communism only happens after a revolution overthrowing the current government and replacing the entire economy with the state overseeing it. Note the word entire.
Socialism is when you have the public own entire industries. For example, how the oil industry in Norway is owned by the state.
Having the government do something or own a business is neither communism nor socialism. It's simply a state owned thing. It's not, for example, socialist for the government to have a parks department.
A city ran store is not the city owning the means of production. There will still be private stores throughout NYC. The areas where these stores are being targeted are where those private stores have chosen not to deploy.
Interestingly "no government" also appears to be exactly what is happening in the US with what some people might describe as end stage Capitalist society.
