But what seems strange to me is that somehow New Zealanders believe it’s a problem that only affects us. A cursory skim through international papers shows it’s an issue for every market on earth.
Here much blame has been heaped on supermarkets.
Our duopoly of massive supermarkets are viewed with suspicion with many, including politicians believing they’re rorting us and every party having some sort of proposal to reign them in.
National and New Zealand First want to break the duopoly up forcibly in classic command economy style normally associated with the left.
The Green Party want to spend billions on a state owned Kiwimart.
While ACT just want to cut red tape.
So yesterday Chris Quin from Foodstuffs appeared on Q + A to defend supermarkets.
He pointed out we are the 13th cheapest grocery market in the OECD and that supermarkets make 2.3 cents in the dollar.
This is a very important point. Our supermarkets seem profitable purely because of the volume of sales they put through.
The Mega supermarkets we shop at each day don’t really exist for much of the world. More intensified cities don’t have the big supermarkets. We drive and buy in bulk. In Europe they walk with a trundler and shop more often.
The ignorance of the economies of supermarkets is what has driven the outrage and the politicians are just following the outrage for approval.
I’ve got a problem with the cost of living, but I don’t have a problem with the duopoly. In fact, their very size makes an awful lot cheaper than it could be.
And now we have a load of politicians of all colours sticking their noses into personal property rights and that doesn’t sit well with me at all.
Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Nope. NACT is to blame. And with last nights poll results it is becoming clearer by the day that Labour/Greens are going to fix it and have the confidence of the electorate to do so. Nicky No-Boats and her coalition of chaos had their change and squandered it.
Every opposition party in the world claims they can fix the problem. None can because cost of living crises are caused by inflation, inflation is caused by spending more than you’re earning and borrowing/printing money to fund it.
We’re all to blame for wanting more government handouts and ‘services’ than we’re willing to pay for. Until someone has the intestinal fortitude to fix this nothing else will work.
Just go down to your local camping grounds, they are full of elderly NZders living in poverty, thats a labor and Natz legacy, spend up on dumb shit and let the kiwi voter take one for the team, lets make Natz and labor minor partys this election, they are both total incompetent failures as political party's.
Anon 2.47's comprehension of the cost of living issue is as flawed as his/her grammar. Venting may make him/her feel better, but it adds nothing of value to the discussion.
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