Desi Talk

www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 4 CITY VIEWS August 7, 2026 N ewYork City Mayor Zohran Mam- dani has just published details of how he plans to fulfill his cam- paign pledge to open five city- owned grocery stores across the city. On Monday, he released his “Recipe for Affordability” proposal and a call for grocery store operators to manage the coming stores. That confirms that rather than government-managed locations, these city-owned stores will really just be delivering a trumped-up subsidy. The stores will carry a core basket of produce, meats, and other groceries placed on average 30 percent below mar- ket prices. But American supermarkets net just 1 to 4 percent profit margins on sales, so you can’t wring out a 30 percent discount just by forswearing profits. The proposal is therefore quite candid that the difference will be made up by taxpayers. It promises to “offer subsidies that will lower grocery prices” and admits that “sustain- ing these lower prices will require targeted public investment.” That undisclosed subsidy total comes on top of $70 million to build out the stores, plus waived rent and property taxes on city-provided sites. This is a more disguised subsidy, of course. A public site used for a store is one that isn’t sold, leased, or used for other municipal func- tions, such as housing or schools. Costs will materialize when NYC must rent space for functions it could’ve put at the locations it owns or when it taxes New Yorkers for money it could’ve got by sell- ing land. Much media attention has focused on the distortive effects on competition. But five subsidized stores are unlikely to have a huge effect citywide. And because Mamdani says the stores won’t stock hot food, beer, or cigarettes, plenty of grocery and bodega revenue is insulated. Yet there will probably be localized undercutting of independent stores on thin margins in the city blocks immediately surrounding each government entity. Whether local consumers end up with more or fewer choices is ambiguous, depending on how neighboring grocers respond to the new government competitor. The deeper problem is the distortions steep subsidies will bring over time. Lower out-of-pocket costs on popular staples will generate excess demand and arbitrage opportunities for resellers. That invites the familiar failure of subsidized retail—some combination of empty shelves, purchase limits, customers wasting time looking for goods, long lines, and black market resale. Over time, there will be pressure for more subsidies and enforcement costs to overcome these challenges. And there’s no guarantee, of course, that the people who get access to the subsidized goods will be the poorest families struggling to make ends meet. Government ownership layers on further risks that subsidies will grow. The plan promises “best-in-class wages and benefits” and preferences for favored local vendors. That’ll inevitably add running costs at the same time Mamdani wants to lower final prices. Then there will be political reasons to favor certain suppliers. With voters on all sides—shoppers, em- ployees, and wholesalers—the size of the grocery subsidies will tend to drift higher as the mayor tries to appease everyone. As Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey put it when I interviewed him earlier this year, these stores will be constrained only when they collide with Thatcher’s problem of running out of other people’s money. Tellingly, the plan’s own diagnosis un- dercuts its solution. It blames high prices, in large part, on operating costs and the scale disadvantages that independent stores face. It also pledges to reduce regu- latory burdens and streamline permitting so private grocers can operate more easily and cheaply. That’d be a real affordability improvement, and one Cato endorses in our own Handbook on Affordability, but it gilds the lily to pile on a new government- run grocery bureaucracy. A lot of conservative commentators seem to expect these stores to quickly showcase the perils of socialism in eradi- cating abundance, à la Venezuela’s Mercal, but Mamdani’s small-scale experiment is far removed from nationalized sup- ply chains. His five government-owned, privately managed stores, paired with vast subsidies to make managers whole, will more likely amount to an underwhelming and increasingly costly boondoggle. To the extent these stores make groceries cheap- er for some, they’ll do so overwhelmingly by shifting costs onto taxpayers. It’s noth- ing new, just more subsidies.” -this article appeared on cato.org july 29, 2026. Mamdani’s Grocery Plan Is Mainly Just More Subsidies By Ryan Bourne and Nathan Miller, Cato.org PHOTO :COLLAGE POSTED ON X.COM/ZOHRANKMAMDANI Mayor Zohran Mamdani announcing the plan to reduce prices of core grocery items. N ationally recognized young sci- entist and inventor Aryash Shy- am of Bethlehem, PA, is bringing his firsthand experience in AI, biotechnology, and engineering to con- versations with leading researchers from NASA, MIT, Stanford, the University of Oxford, and Imperial College London, to Public Radio StationWDIY 88.1 FM. WDIY, the Lehigh Valley community’s public radio station which is a member of National Public Radio, has named Shyam host of its award-winning monthly pro- gram, Teen Scientist. His first episode airs Thursday, August 6, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. and asks a question millions of students, parents, and teachers are already debating: Is artificial intelli- gence transforming education, or simply finishing students’ homework? Before starting high school, Shyam had already designed a CRISPRbased diag- nostic for spaceflight, built and coded an AI-powered robot that targets weeds with laser precision, and created an award- winning documentary about the ethics of gene editing. Shyam’s appointment, the station says, “brings an uncommon perspective to sci- ence broadcasting: a host who isn’t simply interviewing leading researchers, but is actively conducting scientific research, designing technology, and competing at the national level himself.” In 2026, Genes in Space selected Shyam as one of five Junior Scientist Award recipients from 130 middle-school submissions for his proposal, “Validat- ing a Cell-Free CRISPR Fluorescent RNA Diagnostic in Microgravity.” Aryash also designed, built, and coded GreenBeam, a computer-vision robot that targets weeds with a precision laser instead of chemical herbicide. The project earned Pennsyl- vania State Merit recognition in the 2025 3MYoung Scientist Challenge and was featured by numerous media outlets. His other honors include the 2026 PETE&C Technology Student of the Year award, first place in the 2026 AIAA Nation- al 8th-Grade Essay Contest, and first-place mathematics at the 2026 Lehigh Valley Science and Engineering Research Fair. Beyond the lab, Aryash created Editing Humanity: A CRISPR Conundrum, a docu- mentary examining the science and ethics of gene editing, and created a student-led STEM education channel covering arti- ficial intelligence, coding, mathematics, and science. “Across those projects, his goal is the same: make complex ideas understand- able, useful, and open to young people,” the station says. “Young people are often told that sci- ence is something we will get to do some- day,” says Shyam. “Teen Scientist begins with the opposite idea: we can ask serious questions, build real solutions, and con- tribute now. I want listeners to hear the uncertainty, creativity, and persistence behind discovery, not just the finished answer, and to feel that science is a place where they belong.” Some of Shyam’s big questions to leading scientists are – Can AI help students learn, or just help them finish assignments?What invisible life travels with astronauts?Will computers change mathematical proof? Can the design of a soccer ball alter aWorld Cup match? Are we more than our sleep scores and step counts? Could a rock from another star be drifting through our solar system right now? Teen Scientist turns questions like these into fast-moving, 30-minute con- versations that make frontier research clear without stripping away its complex- ity or wonder, the press release says. Featured guests include Dr. Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab and associate professor at MIT; Dr. SarahWallace, a microbiolo- gist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center; Dr. Victor R. Lee, Khosla Family Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education; Professor Kevin Buzzard, professor of pure mathematics at Imperial College London; Dr. John Eric Goff, professor of physics at Purdue University; and Professor Chris Lintott, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford. WDIY Executive Director Margaret Mc- Connell, calls Shyam “extraordinary” and adds, “what excites us most is his ability to make science approachable and remind young people that they don’t have to wait until adulthood to make meaningful con- tributions.” PHOTO:@ARYASHSHYAM.COM Aryash Shyam From CRISPR In Space To Public Radio: Indian American Ninth-Grader Aryash Shyam Named Host Of WDIY’s Teen Scientist By a StaffWriter