The poet Carl Sandburg is probably turning in his grave. In his 1914 masterpiece: “Chicago‘, he wrote lovingly of his adopted hometown, which was then booming in population and national significance:
Come and show me another city with its head held high, singing so proud to be alive and rude and strong and cunning….
Laughing at the stormy, hoarse, fighting laughter of youth, half naked, sweating, proud to be a pork butcher, tool maker, wheat stacker, railroad player, and freight handler for the nation.
That was then. Now the leader of what Sandburg called the “City of Big Shoulders”. is threatening “To work on a path toward opening a city-owned grocery store.” From wheat stacker to wheat stacker!
This isn’t progress, it’s regression, and on an epically confused scale. If the wide-ranging sea change of the past century has made anything clear, it is that governments at all levels really do not need to be involved in the provision of basic goods and services, whether food, airlines, utilities, communications, garbage transportation, healthcare, taxis or even a post office (when, in the internet age, is the last time you actually visited that museum of dead letters?). We don’t even need the government for that no longer into space! But the Chicago government should get involved in the supermarket industry?
It’s just not right, especially when you consider the actual experience of state supermarkets, which has been dismal at best and disastrous at worst, as stores in the old Soviet Union would stock caviar but fail to deliver basic products. Like Scott Lincicome from the CATO Institute reminded usLast week marked 34 years since Boris Yeltsin visited a famous Texas supermarket in 1989 after visiting NASA’s control center in Houston. Yeltsin would later preside over the end of the Soviet Union, but at the time he was a proud, newly elected member of the Supreme Soviet.
Yet he was simply stunned by the sheer abundance and variety of stuff on the shelves, so much so that he told his aides, “We have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.” One of his aides said that as a result, “the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed in Yeltsin.” As winter approaches, the residents of Windy City can console themselves by remembering that history is repeating itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.
“All Chicagoans deserve to live close to convenient, affordable and healthy groceries,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson in a statement. “A better, stronger and more secure future is one where our youth and our communities have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. My administration is committed to promoting innovative, whole-of-government approaches to addressing these inequalities. I’m proud to work with partners to take this step in visualizing what a municipal grocery store in Chicago could look like.”
Somehow a city that can’t do that ensure that residents cannot move, protect those who stayor teach his children will succeed in a business as difficult as the supermarket game. Somehow, a government that is synonymous with corruption…”Over the past fifty years, more than three dozen Chicago aldermen have been indicted by federal grand juries“-will prosper a business environment which packed Walmart, Whole Foods and Aldi, among others.
The top reasons major retailers have left Chicago are issues that city governments try to control for the benefit of their constituents: crime, taxes and regulations. Still, like the Chicago Sun Times reported this summer, the city has failed in these basic tasks:
Supermarket operators have cited crime and homelessness as reasons they had to invest more in safety, driving up costs, according to Amanda Lai, director of the Chicago food industry practice for the consulting firm McMillanDoolittle. These grocers also face high overhead costs in cities.
According to the market-friendly Illinois Policy Institute, Chicago also has the second highest commercial property taxes in the country and the second highest combined state and local sales taxesNeither of which makes the city a place likely to attract and retain businesses, especially when combined with population declines and increases in crime.
But focusing on traditional functions of government, such as protecting individuals and property, and maintaining infrastructure and a functional business environment, is simply not sexy, especially for a mayor who rose on the shoulders of public sector unions and called for squeezing $800 million from the budget “suburbs, airlines and ultra-rich” with new taxes. If RodeMatt Welch commented earlier this yearMayor Johnson doesn’t have to worry about partisanship either, as the ‘Windy City has been governed by Democratic mayors for 93 years in a row. The city council consists of 50 members and currently has zero Republicans. The Cook County Board of Commissioners has 17 seats. ; 16 are being filled by Democrats.” By minimizing political backlash, one-party rule tends to insulate politicians from popular outrage. If you can win and keep your party’s nomination, you’re as good as gold , and that is often a function of appealing to small but powerful special interests.
Rather than expanding the functions of government, Johnson and other leaders of failing jurisdictions should seek to reduce their activities by increasing the efficiency with which they deliver core services. They would do well to model themselves after someone like Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana, who recently retired after a very successful run as president of Purdue University (where he froze tuition, increased endowments, and improved the institution’s reputation).
As governor, Daniels used what he called the Yellow pages test: “If multiple providers are listed for a good or service in the business section of the telephone directory, the government should not do this.” It clearly makes sense to scale back your commitments, especially if you’re already failing in your core functions. But it doesn’t matter politics makes sense, especially when every increase in the size, scope, and spending of government gives you more power to reward your friends with jobs, contracts, and status.
If there’s a silver lining to Mayor Johnson’s ridiculous proposal, it’s that it seems more like vaporware than a hardcore commitment. Like the Chicago Tribune notes, “The first step will be to conduct a feasibility study, although the city has not provided a timeline.” In true bureaucratic fashion, it will take a long time for things to even be postponed indefinitely.
In the meantime, Chicago is likely to continue its long decline (barely maintaining its status as the nation’s third-largest city), making a mockery of Carl Sandburg’s fading vision of the city as
Pork butcher for the world,
Tool maker, wheat stacker,
Railroad player and the nation’s freight handler;
Stormy, hoarse, fighting,
City of big shoulders