Notice: You have been identified as a bot, so no internal UID will be assigned to you. If you are a real person messing with your useragent, you should change it back to something normal.
Anonymous A started this discussion 3 weeks ago#137,448
Your groceries aren't expensive because of grocery store profits, their margins are 2%.
If it all worked out and the government came in, operated at the same efficiency, and took no profit you would shave 2% off your price.
This would also mean you as a city taxpayer were investing money at 0%. The gains would be less than the opportunity cost. The city could invest that in just about anything else for a better return, even exceeding 2%. The fact private companies operate at all, instead of investing in equities is already a charitable act.
So you gain nothing even if it works. And the city doesn't have the same experience and systems to operate at the efficiency grocery stores can run at today. So it would probably be a loss for the taxpayer to just match the prices available today.
Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 17 minutes later[^][v]#1,455,873
It's why it's a great idea to tax food gradually during good times, then at bad times you can magically make food cheaper again.
The problem is government just become dependent on that tax from the good days, so instead you get people having to have financial aid to afford food, while a big part of the aid just goes back into tax
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 59 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,455,874
I’m not saying I agree with Mamdani, but portraying grocery stores like they’re barely scraping by with 2% profit margins or acting like being in business is an act of charity is stupid. Walmarts revenue in 2025 was $680 billion which still gave them a profit of about $20 billion with a 2% profit margin. The Walton family has a net worth of around $500 billion. Acting like 2% is tiny is dumb when literally everybody needs to buy their food from a grocery store. Demand for food is relatively inelastic so people will keep buying about the same amount of it regardless of how expensive it is. The only reason the profit margins are low is to drive out competition.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 3 weeks ago, 4 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,455,875
The only thing that makes one grocery store better than another grocery store when they all provide almost exactly the same goods is price. Larger chains benefit from the economics of scale. 2% of almost $700 billion is still a heck of a lot of money. A small family owned grocery store would have a much harder time surviving on a 2% profit margin. Which is why they don’t exist because chains like Walmart drove them out of business.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 3 weeks ago, 46 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,455,876
I’m not saying you’re wrong that grocery stores operate on low profit margins, but portraying it as charitable is so so stupid. It has nothing to do with the goodness of their hearts.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc quadruple-posted this 3 weeks ago, 7 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,455,878
Although given they’re mostly chains that operate in multiple cities around the United States if he actually did try to enact price controls in New York City, if he even has the authority to do that, the probability that it would work is higher than if it was implemented at a national level, because a company like Walmart would probably rather just maintain their locations in NYC because it’s a market of 8 million people and the cost of subsidizing it using profits from other locations might be worth keeping their market share to prevent competitors from taking foothold in the city. There’s not going to be a world where NYC doesn’t have stores regardless of what policy he comes up with, even if it’s a stupid policy.
Anonymous D joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 52 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,884
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's grocery plan sets up five city-owned, publicly subsidized grocery stores—one in each of the five boroughs—to sell essential foods at
Anonymous G joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 5 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,889
@previous (Oatmeal Fucker !BYUc1TwJMU)
I don't. You can't agree with blacks because then they just take advantage of you. If a white person says what he's saying though then I'll agree
> New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's grocery plan sets up five city-owned, publicly subsidized grocery stores—one in each of the five boroughs—to sell essential foods at > >roughly 30% below standard market prices.
Supermarket deserts are a produce of pilferage, shoplifting, and looting. If we recall the mostly peaceful riots of 2020, the Doritos, steaks, and cola were missing and the produce aisles were untouched.
Anonymous D replied with this 3 weeks ago, 31 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,896
@previous (H)
U.S. grocery and retail stores lose billions of dollars annually to inventory shrink and theft, with self-checkout areas driving up to 3.5% of total sales losses
> U.S. grocery and retail stores lose billions of dollars annually to inventory shrink and theft, with self-checkout areas >driving up to 3.5% of total sales losses > > Just the cost of being in business.
Self-checkout isn’t always an easy scam. Newer scanners automatically assess that someone is mis-coding beef or ringing up the wrong produce and quantities. Certain items also don’t set off the alarms, and don’t get rung up at all.
I’m curious whether the losses at self-checkout are “acceptable” in contrast with having another 5+ employees on shift. Someone must have crunched these numbers.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 3 weeks ago, 11 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,903
@1,455,874 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
You can come up with a big number if you add everything up for the largest store in the country, but 2% is still 2%.
A struggling family isn't going to feel a simple 2% change, and again this is an ideal. The municipal government doesn't have the experience to actually get the same efficiency.
@1,455,875 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
There are many small independent stores in NYC. Bodegas will be the first to close if they end up subsidizing groceries at the public shop.
@1,455,876 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
It's charitable because they could get more than 2% safely with many other businesses.
@1,455,878 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
Why would they want marketshare in an unprofitable market?
The only way that decision would make sound financial sense is if they expected the experiment to end eventually, so they were already positioned when it did.
Now instead of pucking what you want to spend your money on, the city will tax you and make the choice for you. You can go along with their choices to get the value back, or keep making your own choices and end up subsidizing others.
@1,455,886 (E)
Costco also involves an initial investment and lower prices, but Costco is voluntary.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 1 hour later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,908
@previous (A)
It’s not charitable, it’s 2% because that’s what the chains charge to undercut competition, it’s a race to the bottom, there’s nothing honorable about it and they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, this is a stupid argument you’re making.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 3 weeks ago, 9 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,909
The way you create a monopoly is you either sell products at a very low profit margin or even at a loss so that nobody buys your competitors product and your competitor goes out of business. That’s why Amazon wasn’t profitable for so long but now they’re practically a monopoly when it comes to online shopping. Low prices aren’t selfless, there’s a selfish motivation behind it. Which isn’t evil, it’s just how free market capitalism works.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 3 weeks ago, 1 minute later, 6 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,455,910
It’s also the entire logic behind the AI industry right now but some companies will probably go out of business at some point because they can’t all win.
> A better way to think of it, is Target, Walmart, whatever, they’re all in a war of attrition with each other.
Once they have an area they own much of that territory. Retailers, and major chains like McDonald’s and Starbucks are no joke. They use satellite imagery, traffic patterns, census statistics, and complex models to determine competition, alternatives, and to predict returns.
Fast food is more fucked than retail. They killer themselves in their race to the bottom dollar menus, and now they’re minimally staffed so they’re no longer fast and rising food prices means the food is no longer cheap. Why would you pay $80 for a family of four when you could go to a local restaurant or diner?