But the Greens’ commerce and consumer affairs spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March told RNZ that was only “one part of the puzzle” and the government needed to explore all its options – including breaking up the supermarket duopoly.
“While we support having new players in the market, Nicola Willis is banking on big corporations coming into Aotearoa, and that automatically leading to lower prices,” Menéndez March said.
“What we need is action that tackles the greed we are seeing in the duopoly right now.” …
Menéndez March also pointed to the Greens’ policy of taxing excess profits as an option …
Even for the Greens, this is a level of stupidity that is hard to imagine.
They are saying that food prices are too high, and that the way to lower them is to increase the tax on supermarkets!
This type of reasoning wouldn’t even get you NCEA Level 1!
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
2 comments:
Modern politics too often treats activism as a substitute for expertise. Ricardo Menéndez March is a case study.
The Green Party made him its spokesperson on commerce and consumer affairs despite a background that has nothing to do with commerce. Born in Tijuana, he came to New Zealand in 2006, began but did not finish a psychology degree, spent years as a cinema projectionist and in hospitality, and then moved into Auckland Action Against Poverty. That is a political apprenticeship, not a grounding in economics, retail, or competition law.
Nevertheless, he told RNZ the government should consider breaking up the supermarket “duopoly” and taxing “excess profits” to bring prices down. This is a textbook example of Marxist Robin Hood economics: cast the supermarkets as greedy capitalists, declare their profits illegitimate, and send the state in to seize and redistribute. The theory sounds virtuous; the arithmetic does not. Taxes are costs. Raising costs does not reduce prices. Punitive taxation of food retailers either raises shelf prices or cuts staff hours and investment.
The contradictions stack up. Menéndez March calls for “new players” in the market while the party he represents campaigns against large overseas chains — the only companies with the capital to compete at scale. He calls for higher wages but also for measures that would reduce the very profits that fund wages. He calls for breaking up the duopoly without any mechanism beyond slogans. The Commerce Commission already has powers to investigate collusion and block mergers. Forced divestments would be slow, expensive and risky.
None of this stops the Greens’ commerce spokesperson from reaching for headline-friendly fixes. But the grocery sector is not a student debating topic. It is a supply chain feeding five million people. Interventions based on slogans rather than evidence carry costs that ordinary households pay.
Menéndez March’s record is in identity politics and activism, not economics. When he talks about supermarkets he is operating outside any area of training or work experience. Thomas Sowell’s warning applies: “it is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
If the Greens actually wanted credibility on commerce and consumer affairs, they’d start by hiring someone who’s at least opened a P&L, not someone whose exposure to capitalism was selling popcorn between art-house films. But of course Ricardo isn’t really thinking for himself; he’s parroting Chloe Swarbrick and her madcap “alternative budget,” a sort of fantasy shopping list where every price drops because the government shouts at it. Between her student-union spreadsheets and his Marxist Robin Hood slogans, the Greens have produced an economic double act that would struggle to run a lemonade stand. Perhaps Ricardo should stick to rainbow manifestos and migrant petitions and leave supermarkets to people who don’t think “break them up and tax them” is a master plan.
Yes. I would think stuff’s verity Johnson, who runs a struggling burlesque parlour, would make a better commerce spokesman for the greens than Ricardo.
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