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Posted on 08/05/2026 7:03:50 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Bodegas are capitalism at its finest, and they will survive long after Mamdani’s grocery stores have empty shelves and angry taxpayers.
As a little boy in Cuba, I remember walking with my mom to “la bodega.” As I recall, there was one down the street with a “cigar & coffee” corner for the fathers and lots of fresh fruits and seafood that my mother purchased.
“El bodeguero,” or the owner, was usually a friendly guy who understood capitalism better than Milton Friedman and the old shopping principle that the “mother is always right.” In other words, everybody went home happy with their visit to “la bodega.” “La bodega” was capitalism at its best, and it worked beautifully.
This is why Mayor Mamdani should talk to the Cubans who live in New York City. Why? Because the Mayor doesn’t know a thing about being a “bodeguero.” If he can’t find a Cuban, talk to Cesar Baez:
When Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chávez, created a nationwide network of government-run grocery stores called “Mercal” in 2003, he faced the same conundrum of how to control excess demand when prices are set artificially low.
At first, Mercal seemed to work. It quickly became one of Chávez’s most popular social programs. In a 2007 episode of his talk show, Aló Presidente, Chávez compared Mercal’s prices with those at a nearby grocery store. A kilo of sugar at Mercal cost 740 bolívares, compared with a price of 1,300 bolívares elsewhere. Chicken sold for 1,900 bolívares instead of 4,550. The discounts were roughly 43 percent to 62 percent below prices already regulated by the government. Chávez called Mercal an instrument for building “socialist commerce.”
More than 70 percent of households reported buying at least one item at Mercal during the program’s peak in popularity in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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The communists always seem to love rationing.
Hugo Chávez’s grocery stores were a disaster and Mad-dani wants to do better ,LOL
The Mayor doesn’t know a thing about Capitalism except that he hates it................
I love how the NYC Bodegas repurpose cheap Christmas lights into “Bodega Lights”. Makes them easy to find.
That jackass isn’t interested in talking to anybody.....especially if it means him taking his boot off the people’s throat....and buckle your seat belt.....this demon is just getting warmed up.
From the article - and this is exactly what will happen to Mamdani’s government grocery stores:
“Eventually artificially low prices led shoppers to clear out the shelves, and the stores became famous for lines that would wind around the block.
The gap between Mercal’s subsidized prices and prices at other grocery stores created an obvious resale opportunity.
The government responded to the shortages with tighter controls. It capped purchases, assigned shoppers a weekday based on the final digit of their national ID number, and registered sales by ID and fingerprint. Some stores required shoppers to bring a baby or present a birth certificate before they could buy diapers.”
This will surely create same in New York City: long lines, empty shelves, rationing, and a black market. Meanwhile, the likes of Mamdani will continue to shop at evil capitalist, for-profit grocery stores.
Even if he were sincere (which he isn’t) Mamdani would have no interest in anything the Cubans might have to say.
Because every socialist has this core belief:
“This time it will be different.”
But of course it never is.
> the stores became famous for lines that would wind around the block <
Socialism: You wait for bread.
Capitalism: Bread waits for you.
I suppose you could sell at least a LITTLE under normal cost if the product were under quality.
Someone in NYC should show Mamdani what happened in Argentina. They stopped rent controls in 2024 in Buenos Aires. Since then, rents have fallen 40% and the supply of housing has increased 170%. Let him try to explain how this happened.
I visited East Berlin before the wall came down, and I went specifically to stores to see how Communism worked there. It wasn’t true communism as they were a client-state of Russia, but I was amazed to walk into a large shoe store and there was about 200 pairs of shoes available, but the line to get in the store wrapped around the block. I talked to one local about how you get a car there. I noticed they were all the same model car, with about 3 basic colors. The local told me you had to pay all of the cost in advance and get on a waiting list. He had waited 7 years before he got his car, and he was a sem-government worker. THAT IS SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM.
From the Communist point of view, what’s not to love? The bothersome peasants have to spend so much of their time standing in line that they have no energy left to resist the system. The socialist leadership gets to build their power and fortune by determining who gets what. Win-win.
Escapees alway try to make it sound worse than it is/was. Right? Remember why they built the wall in Berlin. All those folks trying to get to the better life in East German........Oh! Not so much.
Reagan used to tell a joke about a Russian who paid in advance for his car and was given a pick-up date several years hence. He asked if he could do it in the afternoon. The bureaucrat asked what difference it made. The peasant replied that he had a plumber scheduled that morning and could only make it in the afternoon.
No. What Los Cubanos need to do is hombre up, grab that little prick by the neck and say No te queremos in Estada Unidos cabron!
Vete a casa!*
“We don’t want you here son of a b-—h! Go home!
Cuban Socialist Bodegas are the reason all the Cubans live in Miami.
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