It’s the idea, although they’ve chosen a weird location for that: La Marqueta is about 300 feet from a grocery store (City Fresh on East 116th). So this pilot store will effectively compete with private groceries for business, muddying the strength of any results (in any direction).
(I say this as someone who is broadly in favor of NYC trying to run city-owned groceries in areas that are underserved.)
Of course, there is a term called coercive monopoly. It exists especially in large infrastructure projects where the startup cost is tremendous so only government, or a single entity without the possibility of competition can enter.
Groceries are not one of these. If you have a problem of high grocery costs, there are many better ways to tackle that other opening a government owned store. But it does make for a great photo op.
Sure. Lots of things governments need to do are unprofitable, like delivering the mail or repairing the roads.
I can go to my local public library, borrow the free books, use the free computers, sit in the free chairs, ask the librarian for free guidance, enjoy the free air conditioning, and even book a free meeting room to meet up with some friends to work on a project.
Profitable? Fuck no. Great to have in my city? Fuck yes.
"Share" of the wealth says nothing about what the amount is. For example, if you create $10 of wealth, my share of the total wealth goes down, but my wealth is unaffected.
"About $42 trillion in new wealth was created in the first two years of the pandemic. Two-thirds of that has gone to the richest 1% of the world’s people, according to a report out Monday from the nonprofit organization Oxfam. In the United States, billionaires are a third richer now than they were before the pandemic."
> For example, if you create $10 of wealth, my share of the total wealth goes down, but my wealth is unaffected.
Starting and and investing in businesses are matters of filing paperwork. The mere act is worth nothing but the investment and paper it's written on.
So the question still remains, what did they create to make them worth the money they have? Because it seems to me the only thing that correlates to their wealth isn't what they created but the contracts they've signed. Which is fine but your contention was they as individuals created something to make them worth that much, and I'm wondering what that is.
I've read biographies on Gates and Jobs, also Satya Nadella. I sidestepped that comment because it seemed snide to me. I know who these people are and what they did with their lives, and how they made their money. Maybe you might re-read their biographies and note how their successes were a combination of skill, luck, connections, circumstance, and survivorship bias, and how each one was backed by an army of workers.
> selling a product or service for more than it costs you is creating value.
Okay but other people are building and selling the service, not the 1%. I agree that's what business is, and they create value, but the 1% is not "the business".
So again I'm left wondering what the 1% actually created themselves such that wealth was not transferred. Because if the value is in selling the product or service, then it would seem to me the people who deserve the benefit are the sales/engineering/manufacturing/service people. But you said it's not a transfer of wealth, it's the actual 1% who created the value. You still haven't said what they create and why that means they deserve to own and control all that wealth.
If you read a biography of Jobs, you'd know that Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy when they invited Jobs to take the helm. This was after a series of CEOs, each one more clueless than the previous at how to run the company. With the same company, the same workers, the same everything, Jobs reorganized and reshaped it and thereby took it to a trillion dollar valuation.
That's creating wealth.
Jobs also did something similar with Pixar. Maybe reread what he did at Pixar? It was Jobs that made the difference and created the wealth.
Do you really think that you (or I) could have replaced Jobs and created the same amount of wealth that you attribute to everything but what Jobs actually did?
Not a chance.
BTW, look at the history of the United States. If you believe wealth is transferred, not created, where in heck was the wealth today back in 1776? Who the heck was it transferred from? Did it randomly somehow fall out of the sky?
If you still cannot see this, start your own business. It will soon be very apparent how wealth is created.
I know a few categories falling under this "richest 1% of the world’s people": entrepreneurs, highly paid professionals and politicians.
The entrepreneurs invested in or built from scratch organizations able to deliver an incredible amount of value to our society in the form of products, services and jobs. These organizations, called businesses, are the unsung heroes that differentiate our lands of plenty from the hunger and cold of countries suffering under communism.
The professionals (doctors, lawyers, programmers) worked in such organizations and added significant value ensuring their success in the market place.
Finally, politicians managed to convince a sufficient number people that only they can solve their problems and thus got themselves elected into positions where they control significant flows of money and/or influence.
Many things government does are not economically viable. That's why they get left to government.
> Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close?
The idea is to build these where that has already occurred.