There are no existing stores in much of the city. Outside of the occasional Whole Foods in expensive neighborhoods there are very few grocery stores. Way too many New Yorkers rely on bodegas for their food which aren’t known for their healthy choices. In a city where the working people don’t own cars, a supermarket that isn’t in the neighborhood might as well be on the moon.
I’m no expert. I don’t know if his plan would work but the issue isn’t competition. The problem is too many people don’t have access to adequate food options.
Bodegas and delivery services don’t want the competition from an entity that does not need to make a profit and can prosecute shoplifters without involving a third party, does not pay property taxes and can exempt itself from many regulations.
Disclosure: I work for a supermarket chain that once operated in NYC but does not any more. Even so the position above is not something I support. It’s just an exposition of the opposition to this idea.
For a form to work for every unusual ethnic background, it would have to have about three pages of checkboxes. Which would still be useless, for a different reason.
And cite that racial discrimination is the purpose of the form? It could well be that its purpose is exactly what it appears to be: Data collection.
I wonder if, were this idea to become reality, bodegas would be at the front of the line to take on these government roles. Could they license their storefronts to the government, exchanging capitalism for guaranteed income in some way? Many bodegas are probably already located in ideal spots for a grocery store, and would need relatively small changes to become one.
The NYC election is getting a lot of attention right now but that’s mostly because it’s the only game happening right now. What happens in NYC isn’t indicative of the rest of the country. What the NYC mayor does while in office has very little affect on the rest of the country. It will only become important if Trump tries to illegally interfere like he is implying he will.
By definition a bodega isn’t big enough to be a true grocery store. They are convenience stores with some grocery options. It’s fine if this was a century ago when there was a baker, butcher, vegetable stand and grocer on the same block but now the bodega is often the only option with a reliance on processed foods.
Not as such, but most university admissions departments are very concerned with increasing/maintaining ethnic diversity in their student bodies. Since for various reasons a race-blind admissions system does not result in diversity in proportion to the US population, most universities have, until recently, taken race into account in their decisions. (The US Supreme Court ruled this illegal a couple of years ago.)
I assume most colleges would prefer to favour students who had suffered significant disadvantages, rather than the relatively-privileged child of a university professor. But the boxes on that form are how their success will ultimately be measured, and appearances matter.
Okay, but why is that? Everyone needs to buy food, so presumably there is demand for grocery stores. Why is no one filling it? Is the rent so high it’s just not viable as a business? In which case, how do the bodegas turn a profit?
As for healthy choices, convenience stores in the UK are similar, and it’s partly due to low turnover making it impractical to stock many fresh foods, but it’s also supply and demand. They don’t have a whole wall of booze as a conspiracy against public health, it’s because people buy it.
It’s a test case for socialist-ish policies. If NYC does well, those policies are likely to become more popular. If it does badly, the reverse. And I suspect that how good a job Dems do running blue states and cities affects how many people are willing for vote for them in federal elections
Sure that’s the narrative. It’s not real though. As has been pointed out multiple times, regardless of his views the mayor doesn’t have the authority to carry out most of what he is proposing. Also this isn’t the first progressive mayor in NYC. David Dinkens was a member of the DSA. Bill de Blasio had a socialist background. Right now it’s the political focus. In a couple of months it will go back to being a local issue. Although with Trump there is always something going on in politics, when it comes to elections there isn’t much going on this year. It’s putting a much greater focus on this race than it deserves.
Bodegas have a business model where all manner of shady practices are commonplace, that a corporate, well capitalized, operator would not be able to use. There are, of course, offsetting scale disadvantages.
There’s also the willingness of the owner and family to work hours and accept physical risks that no (documented) employee would accept. And willingness to buy soda and snacks from some random with a box truck that isn’t a representative of Coke/Pepsi, Frito Lay or Mondelez.
There are lots of reasons why bodegas operate in places where a 7-11, Quiktrip or Circle-K wouldn’t. These well organized chains have too much of a paper trail and deep pockets to go after.
Never mind grocery store chains which in the US are predicated on a 40,000 square foot box minimum with loading bays a semi truck can back up to.
It seems like that’s a solvable problem. If they’re doing shady things because following the proper rules and procedures is too onerous, then those rules and procedures are badly written, because whatever they’re meant to accomplish isn’t getting done anyways if all of the stores of this type don’t follow the rules regardless.
People mentioned that Mamdani’s campaign flirted with the principles presented by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in Abundance. This seems like exactly the problem that Klein and Thompson described in the book. What’s the solution?
Except that apparently he took it seriously enough to be really complete about his ethnic identification.
Damned if i know. I think his promise of free juice when running for some student office in middle school (elementary school?) is more relevant.
Yes, opening a couple of subsidized grocery stores in food deserts might actually be good public policy. It would mean the working poor could buy normal healthy food within their time budget.
No doubt. It might be worth it anyway.
Some of those neighborhoods have enough shoplifting to make it hard to run a store at a profit.
Yes, a traditional grocery store is a non-starter.
“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.
The application allowed students to provide “more specific information where relevant,” and Mr. Mamdani said that he wrote in, “Ugandan.”
His statement suggests he wrote “Ugandan” next to the Black/African American box on the bottom portion, since that’s where the “more specific information where relevant” language appears. If he had simply written Ugandan next to the Other box, there wouldn’t be a problem. But then, Columbia wouldn’t have considered him Black in that case.
You need proof that Columbia engaged in affirmative action? Seems like common knowledge, but this seems like a reasonable history:
We’ll probably have to wait for the outcomes of some lawsuits to see if they’re still engaging in such discrimination.
What a paradox, eh? Diligent enough to include his entire ancestry, but sloppy enough to not realize that Black/African American doesn’t include non-Black African immigrants.
I’m still waiting for any kind of explanation about why any of this fucking matters at all – considering that the opposition figures are wildly corrupt in the present and one of them is a serial sexual harasser to boot – beyond the indulgence of white people getting to grind the axe of racial grievance.
Oh, sure, it’s obvious why they’re doing it. What’s not obvious, and what I need explained to me, is why I, a person who can recognize nonsensical race-baiting horseshit when it’s put in front of me, should give a single solitary fuck about it.
Well, if you are a white guy who is angry that black people are getting a preference over you, perhaps you care more about some guy checking “African American” on a form when he was 17 than about a man sexually abusing women. You know, only one of those might affect you.
If it’s causing such a social ill (food deserts) why do they not arrest and lock up serial shoplifters? You probably wouldn’t need to punish too many to dissuade the others.
No, whole truckloads of goods go astray. When i lived in NYC, i learned to read the “best by” dates, because it wasn’t uncommon for the local grocery store to sell expired goods. Once, i opened some dried fruit with no “best by” date, and wrote to the manufacturer to complain. They replied that the shelf life was highly dependant on temperature, so they had complex formulas for merchants to use instead of a simple date, and also, the box I’d purchased has been reported as “expired and discarded” by whoever bought it from them. That supermarket got a refund for unsold goods. And someone diverted those goods to my shitty supermarket.
As for punishing shoplifters… I don’t think it’s as easy as you suggest, and most of the burden falls on the shopkeeper, increasing their costs.
But i think most of the shoplifted food is just eaten.
