Sounds like the old Soviet strategy for lowering prices: have the government run the stores.

In today’s primary election, New York City Democrats may vote in Socialist Zohran Mandami, who has catapulted himself into a tie with scandal-tarred Andrew Cuomo in the latest polls. He’s promising a collectivist utopia that includes a rent freeze, universal child care, and a $30 an hour minimum wage.

He even favors city-owned grocery stores (see video below), an absurd idea that is also being considered in Chicago and Atlanta.

Why not? It worked so well in Moscow. Everything was affordable and the store shelves were empty.

Russians in the 1970s wait in food lines at grocery stores