Donald Boudreaux has never tried to buy groceries in a poor neighborhood.

[owlectomy]

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education... Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

(WSJ editorial)

Um. Poor people do in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality. This might be invisible in car-dominated suburbs where driving 30 minutes to get groceries is considered normal, but I can tell you what it's like for me trying to get fresh veg at the Key Food by my apartment. (Nah, I'm not actually poor -- which is why I can take the subway to Whole Foods instead -- but my neighborhood is.)

...Does he really think that the Magical Power of Free Markets is particularly efficient at supplying groceries to poor people, when in fact the first principle of the Magical Power of Free Markets is that you can get better stuff if you pay more and worse stuff if you pay less?

Comments

[daedala]

I saw that, read a few paragraphs, and then closed it in disgust. Grr.

[trouble]

Has he never heard of food deserts?

[oyceter]

Uh. Wow. I just went O_O because does he seriously not know about the whole thing with lack of supermarkets in poor neighborhoods?!