Seattle city government faces a steep budget deficit amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years—an estimated 10 percent of its revenues. Yet the city just allocated $1.7 million to help struggling independent supermarkets avoid going out of business. The money is both more than the stressed budget should apportion and not enough to make a difference in a metropolis of nearly 400 food stores.
The move, by Democratic Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson, was a nod to fiscal reality after her predecessor announced last year that Seattle would explore something far grander—opening government-owned supermarkets—to address growing concern about “food deserts,” that is, neighborhoods without ready access to supermarkets. In his statement on the problem, then-Mayor Bruce Harrell noted that at least ten Seattle neighborhoods lacked “convenient access” to grocery stores, and he even invoked the possibility of using government’s eminent domain powers to appropriate private property to create government outlets.
The proposed solution makes little sense in Seattle. The Emerald City is one of America’s largest retail markets and one of the country’s wealthiest big cities, with a median annual household income of about $120,000 and a poverty rate in the single digits, well below that of most large cities…