So Mamdani's gonna use tax dollars to run grocery stores, eh?

NYC mayor Mamdani says his regime will put $50 million into opening and operating five grocery stores.  The first will be in East Harlem, in a store already owned by the city.  Mamdani says they plan to spend $30 million to expand it.

A tiny bit of "maff" shows that's over half the total amount this cunning communist earmarked for all five stores combined--meaning the other four will need to be opened for $5 million apiece to be within his "budget." 
  "But don't worry, comrade!  If we need more money we'll just raise taxes on duh rich!"

Critics note that non-city-owned grocerie stores have to pay sky-high NYC rents, utilities, maintenance, taxes and renew dozens of licenses every year.  But the city stores won't have to pay either rent or taxes, and will likely get sweetheart deals on water, trash and licenses.  So naturally they'll have a huge advantage over non-city stores.
  But offsetting these cost advantages is that the city-owned stores will be paying double the going rate for labor, because that's part of Mamdani's pie-in-the-sky bullshit.

Point is that with government-owned stores, not only are losses covered by tax dollars, corrupt bookkeeping hides the real losses from the public.  Bureaucracy slows decisions. Political hires and union rules kill efficiency.  Past experiments with city-owned grocery stores in other Democrat cities have shown far higher costs than forecast, and huge losses.