It wouldn’t be the first government-run grocery store—and not even the first one in the United States. For some context about what Chicago is planning, The Wall Street Journal dispatched a reporter to check out the municipal-owned grocery store in Erie, Kansas, which opened in 2021.

How’s it going there? Uh, not great.

“Erie Market, which the city took over in 2021, is losing money almost every month amid stiff competition from a Walmart 15 miles away and a Dollar General across the street,” reports the Journal’s Joe Barrett. Erie Market posted just a single profitable month during 2022 and lost $132,000. …

But city officials “aren’t giving up,” they tell the Journal. Meanwhile, the store’s manager says the “goal” is to lose only $100,000 this year.

[Of course they’re not giving up. They’re not losing THEIR OWN money, after all — they’re losing the taxpayer’s money. And they’ll continue to do so as long as the taxpayers let them. The same thing will be true in Chicago, only they’ll also undercut the market for private-sector sustainable grocers, assuming any of them want to invest in crime-ridden Chicago at all. Until they solve the crime problem, Chicago won’t solve the grocery problem. — Ed]