#municipalgroceries — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

"Between 2020 and 2024, grocery prices rose nearly 24 percent, outpacing both wages and overall inflation. Even with inflation slowing to just over 1 percent in 2024, grocery store sticker shock remains. For the wealthy, food takes up less than 5 percent of disposable income. But a box of Cheerios costs the same no matter how much money you make, and for low-income families, that share easily creeps up to 30 percent.

Because our food system is designed around corporate profit rather than public need, and because we lack the political imagination to envision otherwise, we tend to take this state of affairs for granted. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t outrageous.

The US grocery market is a picture of consolidation dominated by Kroger, Albertsons, Walmart, and Costco. These corporations don’t care about food access in a given neighborhood; they care about quarterly earnings. When profits dip, they shutter stores, leaving behind food deserts and economic sinkholes.

The grocery industry is shaped like an hourglass, with high-end specialty stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s for affluent shoppers and dollar stores and discount warehouses for everyone else. The mid-tier supermarket, the one-stop shop that once anchored working-class neighborhoods, has stopped expanding, its growth hampered by decades of inequality and predatory corporate strategies."

https://jacobin.com/2025/08/municipal-grocery-stores-mamdani-infrastructure

#USA #NYC #Mandani #MunicipalGroceries #PublicInfrastructure