The Price We Pay
Interesting.
I've noticed that the farmers aren't getting much more than they have over the last 20 years for their produce, and the prices have soared.
Some people say "Well, it's the price of petrol/transport and the cost of getting it to the supermarket" and that's a crock of crap, it doesn't increase the price by as much as you see it increase. I know farmers who grow pumpkins, for example, and they tell me that, at the prices charged at the supermarket they'd be getting a few thousand dollars for a tonne of their pumpkins.
The investigation into supermarket pricing was a con, and produced the answers that the big two wanted it to produce.
Who else has noticed that the seasonal specials you used to see in, say, spring lamb, when the price would drop dramatically, and the same with many varieties of fruit and vegetables, stopped a long time ago. The prices are now mostly regularly expensive. And the farmers are being screwed.
2 comments:
The neighborhood butcher is fast disappearing (mine shut last year) reducing competitive discounting in meat such as the old spring specials, Kae.
Remember labour is also a commodity (skill) to be traded and its price has practically doubled in the past decade - that's probably the biggest component of rising prices - wages, the price of labour.
Add to that all the new red tape from compulsory Super, to GST and maternity leave, running a small business is a mug's game unless you have a large unpaid family to help. Or big business which has the resources to deal with mandated employee entitlements.
Big govt, big business, and big unions all complement and promote each other, a vicious circle. True competitiveness would mean breaking up big unions and individual wage bargaining. Until that happens we will all be increasingly screwed by a Mussolini-style conspiracy of govt, big business and union fat cats.
Prof Bruce will now get off his high horse.
How can Woolworths charge something like $30/kg plus for a rack of lamb and the local IGA only $14/kg? At IGS rib eye fillet is frequently on special, whole, for $6-10/kg (full price about $12-15/kg), whereas at the big two it's more like double the top price at IGA and then some, and the special is the same price as the normal IGA price. Rump at IGA about $6-10 on special whole (sometimes down as low as $5), and full price about $12-15, at the big two it's double that and then some.
I know there is a drought, but the prices charged at Woolworths and Coles are extortionate, and the farmers see nothing of that.
I'm sure people who shop at these giants would be shocked at how little farmers get for their product.
And there is no way that I will believe that the beneficent Big Two aren't making a killing from screwing the punters, as well as everyone else along the chain of suppliers, transporters, etc.
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