Communist Zohran Mamdani's Big Government-Owned Grocery Store Scheme Takes a Believably Hilarious Turn

Self-avowed communist Zohran Mamdani, who is currently the favorite to become the next Mayor of New York City, has a brilliant plan for reducing food prices: Government-owned grocery stores. Because if there's anything the government is good at, it's running business enterprises efficiently, right?

But while his plan is finding support among the throngs of delusional people on the far left, there's just one small issue. As it turns out, the entire funding gambit for the endeavor is based on Mamdani's inability to read a website graphic properly.

ALSO SEE: Trump Takes Shots At New York City Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani

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

This claim is based on a basic misunderstanding of the city’s current grocery subsidies. The money he plans to use to pay for his city-owned grocery stores is money the city doesn’t have.
Specifically, he wrongly believes that the city is spending $140 million to subsidize private grocery stores, and he thinks he can take half of that money and use it to build government groceries.
“We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores whose mission is lower prices, not price-gouging,” Mamdani said in one scripted video.
In another interview, he went into a bit more detail, saying he had already detailed “how we are going to pay … for the entire agenda.”
According to Mamdani, his five grocery stores would cost $60 million.

Getting into the specifics, Mamdani believes that he can take half of $140 million in "subsidies" to pay for his city-owned grocery store scheme, except that the money does not exist. How did he make that mistake? He read an infographic on a website that claimed $140 million had been "invested into NYC's economy through FRESH," which is the city's tax break and regulatory relief program for food providers. The problem? That is almost all private investment from the corporate-owned grocery stores he maligns.

The city itself has only given about $3.3 million a year in tax relief. The Washington Examiner noted in its write-up that it would take another 42 years for New York City to reach $140 million in tax breaks. But even that doesn't underscore just how dumb Mamdani is because without those tax breaks, you would not get the over-and-above investment from private companies, which would mean total city revenue would likely decrease. So this guy's entire plan, which has been a cornerstone of his campaign, is based on his inability to understand basic numbers.

I almost went with "unbelievably hilarious" in the headline to describe this story, but after some reflection, I decided that would be misleading because this is totally believable. Mamdani represents the level of idiocy in governance you would expect from a communist. He can't even read an infographic properly, but he's going to run a city with a GDP larger than most every other country on the planet.

But hey, if this is what New York City wants, have at it. As I wrote in a previous write-up, we can't keep saving the far left from itself. Let them destroy themselves. It's the only way for real lessons to be learned.

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