Mamdani Just Flip-Flopped on Grocery Store IDs in 24 Hours — But New Yorkers Should Hate the NEW Policy Even More

The adverse consequences are entirely predictable and entirely Mamdani’s fault for ignoring every lesson economics has to teach about price controls and unlimited subsidies. Tourists will shop there. Outer-borough residents who don’t live in the city will shop there. Illegal aliens will shop there. Arbitrageurs will buy in bulk and resell elsewhere at market prices. Demand will explode. Costs will blow through projections. Shortages will emerge for the most popular items. And when the deficits pile up — because they will — someone will demand more taxpayer money rather than admitting the program was designed by someone who has never taken Economics 101.

Meanwhile, local bodegas and private grocery operations — the small businesses that have served New York neighborhoods for generations — will lose customers to a government competitor that doesn’t have to turn a profit because City Hall covers the losses.

Add it to the tab. Government grocery stores open to anyone on earth. A doxxed database of 960,000 property owners. A rent freeze rigged by a packed board. A pied-à-terre tax on the city’s wealthy with a deliberately broken exemption process.

This is what socialist governance produces when the ideas meet reality. New York is living it in real time.