Two things.

1. All things aside, he obviously has not thought this through. A chain of government stores? Poor people are all over the US, in different numbers. They all would have to have an access to such stores. This would involve building a lot of such stores - in every small town, etc. - to account for those who won’t be able to drive to a nearby city. This would involve planning on a scale not seen since the USSR. This would also involve incredible waste, since you can’t predict who will buy what, and these stores would not work on a free market principle, and you still have to always have fresh supplies, so a lot of products would just be spoiled.

2. When you propose such a giant social re-engineering process, you just open the door to any giant social re-engineering process. For then one would have to ask not only what do the poor people contribute to society, but what all the right-wing millionaires and billionaires are good for and whether it’s would not be advisable to take certain drastic fiscal measures against them.