Waatea News Column: 5.9% inflation highlights why Supermarket duopoly must be smashed!
The surge in food and oil prices is hitting people barely surviving Covid while hurting first time buyers with steep mortgage rate increases while putting pressure on renters.
Add to this misery a feeling amongst many progressive voters that while Jacinda has protected us from the worst ravages of Covid, she has not made anything close to the progress required on housing, inequality and meaningful environmental change.
Labour needs a vision, voters need hope.
Following the Commerce Commission’s own recommendation, the Government should step in alongside Iwi to take a 30% stake in the supermarket industry to bust up the duopoly.
Labour has an obligation to fix the broken market to facilitate healthy capitalism.
Lower food prices, better prices for growers and living wages for staff would do more to help everyone facing the steep cost of living increases than any single other pieces of social policy!
If they are prepared to spend $3billion on unemployment insurance to benefit white-collar middle-class workers, what about the vast majority trying to make ends meet?
When does Labour finally step up and be bold for poor people?
First published on Waatea News.
Labour needs a vision, voters need hope. LOL
This inflation was created by border closured and lockdowns
There are alternatives to the supermarket duopoly. Try they many fruit and vegetable shops butcher shops Chinese supermarkets and you can even buy groceries at the warehouse.
The prices in the supermarkets are going up on a daily basis, because Kiwis will not complain. It’s time the duopoly was busted and the fat cats that run be forced to lower prices to match those paid by the rest of the world. Opening the country’s doors to some of the cheaper supermarket brands such as Lidl and Aldi would help as well. Why aren’t they allowed into this country? Because we might use them and take some of the profit away from the duopoly!
Pretty sure they’re allowed.
Small market with not too many good sites available as well.
This country has 5 million population spread over avast landscape . Even if they got half of the people buying off them they would not be able to make a profit on the low margins they get overseas due to high transport costs and limited suppliers . The only people that can run a business model at a lose is the government but it is then the tax payer that picks up the slack so you will get hit one way or the other .
In response to inflation Poland and Hungary temporally removed GST on food and Australia provides also an example.
Interesting,… so why are we still having a tax on food dreamt up by the neo liberals from 28 years ago when there are constant complaints made to remove it, at least from vegs, fruits, meats , milk , bread and cheese etc?
…”GST was introduced by the Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand on 1 October 1986 at a rate of 10% on most goods and services. It replaced existing sales taxes for some goods and services. GST was a part of the economic reforms initiated by Labour Finance Minister Roger Douglas dubbed Rogernomics”…
There ya go , – the original scumbag neo liberal himself and his mates had their sticky little dirt ingrained fingers in it.
There’s no such thing as ‘ healthy capitalism’ unless you believe that capitalists controlling governments/controlling markets is an acceptable component of capitalism. Otherwise Labour is merely following the playbook of their capitalist overlords, meaning our economy like (almost) every economy is purposely about to tank, only to be resurrected (or built back better) by the very same capitalist powers who want to this old model gone. Its almost like a form of bankruptcy where they won’t have to pay a dime for all the free trillions they’ve given themselves over the years with a few extra bonus aspects to this new capitalist system that better cements their control over us all.
Agreed we need to break up the duopoly. I think an Iwi backed third group would be ideal. Perhaps with government assisted funding to get off the ground. Unfortunately a big chunk of food inflation is coming from wholesale suppliers rather than the supermarkets at the moment. So a third group will be great for competition in the long run, buts it is not going to help consumers in the near term.