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- Lynch's logic of treating this sort of municipal socialism as a pragmatic form of needed publicly utility doesn't stop with grocery stores or food deserts. Hospital chains are pulling out of a lot of rural areas due to the same economic forces, leaving many communities without ready access to health care. As with grocery stores, there's an argument for local town and city governments to provide basic health care services. The same goes for child care and public housing, as the twin crises of affordable child care and affordable housing are not limited to big cities. Meanwhile, by creating its own public bank, a local government would simultaneously gain a place to park its revenues, make sure at least some of the credit creation in the local economy is democratically directed, and provide local residents with another place to go for basic banking services other than predatory industries like payday loans. This doesn't even get us into all the services — from libraries to schools to parks to traditional utilities like water and sewers — that U.S. politics already considers the natural purview of local government.