New York City Builds a Grocery Store to Supplement Food Stamps

New York City has an exciting new idea for helping people afford groceries:

Become a grocery store.

Not increase food assistance. Not issue grocery vouchers. Not supplement SNAP benefits.

No, that would be much too easy.

Instead, the city can obtain buildings, renovate stores, buy refrigerators, hire employees, order inventory, operate checkout lanes and manage an entire grocery business so it can subsidize the price of groceries.

But here’s where this gets interesting.

What happens when a customer pays with SNAP?

The federal government already gave that customer money specifically to buy food. Now New York City taxpayers subsidize the grocery store so that the federally funded SNAP dollars buy more groceries.

Congratulations!

We have invented a food-stamp supplement with a produce department.

If New York City wants to supplement the purchasing power of people receiving SNAP, it could presumably find a way to do that without first becoming the proud owner of aisle seven.

Instead, we’ll build and operate grocery stores so the government can subsidize groceries purchased with money provided by another government.

Meanwhile, the privately owned convenience store down the street can continue performing its traditional role in this exciting new economic system:

Paying taxes.