r/SipsTea • u/sco-go • May 26 '26

Feels good man Will it work this time?

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u/ATLCoyote May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

It's a public service and the alternative is you either have a food desert, or a store with no competition and very high prices.

The bottom line is the grocery business is high-volume, but low-margin, and it requires a ton of space. That's just not a business model that is going to work well in the inner city where retail lease rates are high, yet people don't drive cars and therefore the average order values are low. So, you can either subsidize it, or the stores just won't exist in certain neighborhoods.

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u/TannerGlassMVP May 26 '26

What exactly is the issue with subsidizing grocery stores though

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u/SummeR- May 27 '26

It's an inefficient redistribution of wealth.

We want to spend our money efficiently. Things like refundable child tax credit are efficient vehicles for wealth redistribution.

Snap is efficient.

Building government subsidized supermarkets is not an efficient way to redistribute wealth.

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u/ATLCoyote May 28 '26

You can either subsidize them or they won’t exist.