In the midst of many New Yorkers immersed in the wonderful blueprint painted by Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a public supermarket in Kansas City, Missouri, in the heart of the United States, with empty shelves, gave these people a loud “warning”.
According to local TV station KMBC NEWS (ABC 9), the food supermarket named “Sun Fresh” is filled with empty shelves and there is a stench permeating the city. It is unclear whether it is due to supply issues or mismanagement.
The media reported that this store was operated successively by two different types of businesses, initially for profit and later taken over by a non-profit organization. The latter received nearly $29 million in taxpayer funds from the city government through bonds, loans, regulations, and subsidies.
When the store first opened, it was crowded with people, but in just 2 or 3 months, it turned into what it is now. Customers say they dare not buy milk here; some dates have surely expired and people don’t want to buy them. Almost all other goods are almost gone.
“I can tell you, it’s almost dead now,” an angry customer told the media, “all that money has gone down the drain.”
Many people believe that this video foreshadows the future of New York City. One user on social media posted, “Supporters of Mamdani, please take a look at this.”
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa posted a video of the local TV station on social media platform X and said, “This is the Soviet-style routine proposed by a certain mayoral candidate.”
In the Democratic primary, Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral nomination by emphasizing the affordability of people’s lives. His manifesto includes establishing a city-owned grocery store network in New York City.
“This is like a public choice of agricultural products,” Mamdani said in a TikTok video, “we will shift government funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores, whose mission is to reduce prices, not raise them.”
This proposal has raised concerns for some New Yorkers. Supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis even threatened to close his Gristedes chain of grocery stores, saying, “We can’t compete with Mamdani’s free grocery store.”
In the face of people’s questioning of his socialist or communist ideology, Mamdani responded that he values potential policies over implementing an ideology.
“Regardless of how you view this idea, I believe there should be space for reasonable policy experiments in our city and country, where we can actually test our ideas,” Mamdani said, “if they work, they work; if they don’t, that’s life, then the idea is wrong.”
Immigrants from China, Cuba, or Venezuela in New York City want to tell Mamdani, there is no need for experimentation, they fled to the United States from failed experimental countries.
Democratic District 65D leader Yu Jinshan said, “Socialism is outdated and not suitable for New York City.” If socialism is so great, “when Mamdani’s family left Uganda, why didn’t they go to those socialist countries? Why come to the free market America?”