Here’s a letter to National Review.
Editor:
Jim Geraghty rightly ridicules NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to open government-run grocery stores (“A Few Problems with City-Owned Grocery Stores,” June 26). The irony of this self-described “democratic socialist’s” scheme is rich: There is no greater testament to the productive and economic-democratization powers of capitalism than modern American supermarkets.
For starters, as Mr. Geraghty and others note, grocery retailers’ profit margins are razor thin, testifying to the intense competition of that industry. This competition is surely a major contributor to the steady decline in Americans’ costs of feeding themselves. Eliana Zeballos and Wilson Sinclair reported earlier this month that over the past 60 years the share of disposable personal income that Americans spend on food at home has steadily fallen. Just under 12 percent in 1964, this share today is around five percent. This fall in food prices is all the more remarkable given that the government – an outfit that, according to Mr. Mamdani and other socialists, supplies the only hope of protecting the working class from capitalists’ predations – continues to enrich rich farmers by artificially buoying the prices of many agricultural products.
Further evidence of competition in grocery retailing is this: In the 1950s the typical supermarket in the U.S. offered 6,000 items; today it offers 50,000.
But perhaps the most powerful evidence doesn’t come from statistics, but from personal investigation. Walk into any supermarket. You’ll realize that even if your income is below average, there’s almost nothing offered in that remarkable emporium that you cannot easily afford. Grapes and blueberries in January from Chile; salmon from Nova Scotia, fresh or frozen as you like; an assortment of dry breakfast cereals almost too many to count; odor-suppressing trash bags with built-in ties; prepared foods the quality of which 50 years ago would have won a Michelin star for a restaurant.
Importantly, you customize your grocery cart to get exactly the mix of items that you want, which differs from the mix chosen by each of the many other shoppers who are in the store with you. To get this mix you need not attend meetings to lobby for your choice or otherwise to seek the approval of anyone else. No institution in modern society outdoes the supermarket at being pro-choice. This happy outcome is opposite the dream of ‘democratic socialists’ in which individualized economic choices give way to the collective, one-bundle-fits-all outcome chosen by a majority of the voters.
To identify American grocery shoppers, of all people, as being in special need of a subsidized grocery service is as ludicrous as identifying Gisele Bündchen as a woman in special need of a subsidized dating service.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
