Amid a $5.4 billion budget deficit, the mayor of New York City is pushing forward with a proposal that has historically yielded terrible results.
reason.com
When the grocery business gets so political and complicated, and margins so thin, that a powerhouse like A&P - a feared monolith for much of the 20th Century - couldn't make it go; a business where Safeway, which grew during the Depression, was a business model born in hard times...when these cannot survive (Safeway bankrupted and purchased by Cerberus Capital, the Chrysler looters)...when even foreign investors, such as Dutch multinational Ahold gives up on its US investments (Topps Supermarkets, First National Supermarkets, in NY, PA, OH)...
...in that world, I don't think a GUBBERMINT is gonna be able to do it better.
In the world I grew up in, there was an ugly term - State Store. It was effectively a curse.
With the repeal of Prohibition, liquor control was given over to the States, and various states handled it differently. Many states chose to control the distribution and retailing of alcoholic beverages. I had feet in Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania...three different solutions. Ohio and PA had State Stores - small, dingy, unattractive shops. Ohio's stores were run like catalog showrooms - there would be the liquor display case, like a bar rack behind glass, and the customer would fill out an order slip, like with a catalog showroom. Then the fat, grody clerk would waddle to the back room and produce the hooch. The bill was LARGE - I'll get to that.
Pennsylvania went even farther. In Ohio, beer and wine could be sold in grocery stores; and later, beer was permitted sold in quick marts. NOT in Pennsylvania. You wanted beer or Boone's Farm, you had to go to a State Store. Which was closed from 5pm Saturday to Monday 9am. And you could NOT buy a six-pack - beer was only sold by the case. Or the keg.
And not sold cold.
New York, by comparison, had very liberal liquor licensing. Anyone who could raise capital and rent a storefront, and pass a background check, could open a liquor store. The products were cheap - often, too, so were the stores; one I knew was run in the corner of a semi-abandoned feed mill. But the price, for the same product, was 1/3 the cost of what it was in Ohio or PA.
So much for government efficiency.
I don't know about PA, but Ohio's State Stores didn't show a profit. Reform in the 1980s ended that system, and everyone was delighted. So, all that money didn't buy revenue for the state - only subsidized gross inefficiency.
No, Mam-dummy is going to waste HUGE quantities of money to FOMENT CLASS ENVY, as the clinically-retarded alien hominids get their groceries for free, while the product, and the overhead, all are put to the city budget, and the state taxpayers.
Absolute fail. Not that there was any question; but I guess, some lessons have to be re-learned OVER and OVER and OVER. Government, not constrained of pricing disciplines, simply CAN NOT run a business or service efficiently! Be it trash control, liquor or grocery sales, or water or utility networks!
