Law student Tony Vanderhoef has produced a sharp video on Mamdani’s taxpayer-funded grocery stores:

The Mamdani markets are official, and they’re a bad deal. 70 million taxpayer dollars up front for 5 stores. And so what do you get for that? Well, 30% discounts on a small list of goods. Aldi already beats that.  Walmart already beats that. So the city is spending $70 million to lose to competitors that already exist for free. And keep in mind, this is before a single day of operating cost is accounted for. You still have staff, inventory, maintenance. None of that 30% discount pays for itself.

And for what? A narrow selection of basic goods. You don’t have a pharmacy, there’s no deli counter, you don’t have a bakery. And so what New Yorkers are really getting in reality are higher costs with smaller discounts, with fewer options, without any services. It’s a textbook example of a bloated bureaucratic government requiring more to give you less…

There’s reportedly 45 grocery stores within a 35-minute walk of the site he picked. The desert isn’t real. The math was never the point, and it’s not really about the savings. It’s about government control, government ownership of these facilities. It’s really about socialism.