It's a wild time, that's for sure. I specifically remember about 20 years ago when we were in the grip of a drought. Lamb prices, not beef though, for some reason, went through the roof. We were assured that prices would drop when the drought ended. Well, the drought ended, and they knew people were now used to paying higher prices, so there it stayed.
Same with beer, flashy pub down the road sells beer for $11 a schooner, regular pubs see that it doesn't seem to harm patronage so they bump up the price themselves, a little bit of grumbling, wait that out and boom! $11 schooners are the norm
"You _will_ own _nothing_ **and** _be happy_ about it. After all, *any* amount of _s^oc^ia^l^i^sm_ is _so much worse_ - Stalin and Gulags, _am I right_? _You don't want Stalin and Gulags, right? RIGHT?! {RAISES FIST}_"
Wikipedia, what is an abusive relationship?
Absolutely- meat prices rose though the roof for about a year and a half during COVID times after a mega drought caused shortages.
They dropped to rock bottom prices about a year ago and haven’t recovered since. But it hasn’t stopped the supermarkets and middlemen gouging the farmers and consumers.
The agriculture minister does nothing. The ACCC does nothing, everyone sits on their hands while Australians go broke and hungry.
It’s never going to go down unless massive changes take place to eradicate corruption and price fixing
Regulations. The kind you're only going to get from a progressive party that doesn't prioritise the profits of big businesses over the lives of the people they're supposed to be fighting for.
That's it. That's all we need. Neoliberals are constantly complaining about regulations because once upon a time, they put a stop to this kind of rampant greed.
We don't need to decapitate anyone. We don't need to give rich executives even more wealth because they've pinkie promised it will trickle down. We dont need to burn everything down and switch to some other kind of "ism". We don't even need to bikeshed about the 1000 different ways we could address this problem until we find some perfect solution that doesn't exist.
We just need to pry greedy scumbags out of our political parties so they no longer get to decide what laws greedy scumbags have to follow.
Exactly this. The system worked before and can be made to work again. Just fix the deficiencies. Make sure that markets benefit the majority. Cripple corporate power so that they can't use it to exploit others for profit. Nationalise anything that has a natural monopoly. Reduce barriers of entry for things that work best with market competition. Break up corporations that have too much market power.
Oh they absolutely will. For all the pageantry of their "left wing neoliberal vs right wing neoliberal" play fights, they actually have incredible class solidarity when it matters.
They'll immediately unite to paint the party as crazies who just don't understand the complex economics of bullshit neoliberalism that never works. The attacks will come from every breed of politician, to be broadcast on every TV station, cheered on by an army of sock puppets.
But the same is true for literally any move that threatens their profits and if we can't achieve "this only less greedy", we're sure as fuck not going to be able to do Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
Myopic and naive.
Your assertion is essentially that if we leave in place the incentive structure from whence these 'greedy scumbags' grow, the environment which shapes and naturally selects for them, and push them back a bit it'll all work out. As if it would be anything more than at best rolling back the clock.
Anything but acknowledging the "corruption", the greed, the wetiko, are emergent properties of a system based on money, markets, and private profits. All the pious wishing in the world doesn't make it possible to decouple that from capitalism.
What we're seeing is not a perversion of an otherwise benign or salvageable system. This is what you get: exponential consolidation of wealth and power into fewer and fewer, ever more ruthless hands.
Without changing the paradigm of the mode of production it's all lipstick on a pig, and all of this feckless reformism gives aid and comfort to the ruling class.
"At best rolling back the clock"? Rolling back the clock sounds fucking awesome. Roll it back to when people could own their own homes, universities were free, unions were strong, doctors all bulk billed, consumer goods didn't rely on the exploitation and oppression of foreign workers and taking a few months off work to fuck around wasn't a catastrophe you might never recover from.
Not only would that be fucking awesome, its an *incredibly easy* vision to sell people. It's literally just "what the boomers had before they decided they were entitled to everyone else's share too".
Plus, as a cherry on top, it doesn't involve the dubious morality of roaming the country lynching people based on their tax bracket. You just make laws and charge the executives who break them.
If you're willing to reject *all of that* outright just because it's not your own instant, made-to-measure utopia, then it sounds to me that you're not actually interested in building a better, fairer society at all, you're just another psychopath that wants a turn on the guillotine.
The reality is that capitalism, communism, socialism, libertarianism or anarchism are all just irrelevant bikeshedding. If you're unable to ethically and effectively strip greedy people of their power, every single one of them will fail.
So if you want to spend the rest of your life trying to explain communism to Sky News viewers, you go right ahead. Just don't get in the way of people trying to solve a problem that you'd have to solve anyway.
This is not an easy vision to sell - unions are thugs, universities are elitist ivory tower academics telling you what to do because they think they're better than you, the public health system is terrible - just look at the waiting lists (you'd be much better on private health insurance), regulations to ensure that businesses don't exploit people or damage the environment are so much red/green tape stifling our amazing productivity and making you pay more for goods and services.
And a not insignificant portion of the voting public believe all of this, and will vote for people who are interested in making wealthy people wealthier because they say that the other guys are in favour of thugs, elitism, and making sure that your lights go out.
This is why we will not have the clock rolled back to apoint where any of those nice things you asked for will actually happen untils something fairly significant changes.
Nice politically illiterate strawman, and you've chosen to deal with the problem of leaving the seeds of disaster in fertile ground with "that sounds great actually". Did you just graduate from the kindergarten school of debate?
Reformists got their way (and only because the ruling class perceived a credible threat of revolution) *generations* ago and the concessions have been steadily eroded ever since. We are living through the fruits of reformism right now, and the cry of reformists ever echoed is "this isn't working, let's do it some more".
For brevity we'll just put aside the ecological devastation, the non-negotiable delusion of continuous growth, and the auto-cannibalising inherent to late stage capitalism.
A mode of production is not 'irrelevant bikeshedding'. It's the all-pervasive root from which the rest of society is dominantly determined.
Thoughts and ideas, ideology, laws, customs, beliefs, all are more products of the material reality and abstractions closer to that reality like relations of production than the other way around.
Our society is built on a foundation of extraction, exploitation, and externalisation in the very core mechanics of how we arrange to produce and distribute things. How are we to expect fairness, equity, and stability?
Greed is an emergent property in people that informs our understand of how markets work, it's not a result of the market.
I wanted an extra slice of cake at parties well before I heard of Adam Smith.
A certain amount of greed is to be expected; it's a pro-survival behaviour after all. But not to the extent that it appears under a hegemony that must reproduce selfish and myopic ideology, and make pro-social thought and behaviour as taboo as possible in a social species, in order to perpetuate itself.
If this kind of greed was the norm at the hunter-gatherer stage, humans would never have survived long enough to become a threat to the ecosphere.
Solidarity with other movements. People get so pissy about getting inconvenienced because people are marching for climate change or teachers wanting a pay rise and then they tell around and complain that their own lives are shit because nobody cares for them. People would show up and support you and your niche needs if you went and supported others.
The other thing is just being involved in politics. The Libs only have something like 40,000 members in a country of 26 million. If you want policies a certain way then show up and get involved.
I saw a comment on another thread today that a moderate liberal is just a Trojan horse. They hold no real party power but they let all the hard conservative cloaks and daggers through the door with them.
Country wide revolution, and the guillotine working overtime. Of course it'll never happen. But that is the only way that will happen. Politicians will never vote against their own interests, and it is not in their interests to reduce business profits, or reduce the ridiculously inflated real estate prices, or anything else, because they all invest in it, hope to work in the industries after leaving politics, out whatever else kickbacks are going on.
The situation isn’t bad enough for this. The bulk of Australians can still pay their mortgage, afford food, Netflix at night and a cheap glass of wine. It needs to be far, far worse for ‘revolution’
Violent internal revolutions don't tend to stop with just the removal of the Bad People You Don't Like. The French Revolution continued after the execution of Louis XVI through the Reign of Terror and ended up with Napoleon Bonaparte as dictator. The English Civil War continued after the execution of Charles I with battles and massacres and ended up with King Charles II ruling the country. The Russian Revolution continued into the Red Terror and ended up with Stalin as dictator, and many "Red" revolutionaries killed or imprisoned during the purges - not to mention everyone else. The Cambodian civil war resulted in over a million buried in the the Killing Fields - including purged Khmer Rouge members - and Pol Pot as dictator. The Chinese Civil War? Mao, purges, millions of executions and imprisonments (not all of them landlords). The Iranian Revolution? Definitely not more liberal under a theocracy than under the Shah.
Are there any "good" internal violent revolutions that you would like to highlight as a model? (American Revolution doesn't count - the UK was effectively an occupying power)
I didn't say it was a good thing, or that it would even be largely a positive thing. I said that it was the only way (short of maybe a global financial collapse), that those objectives could be achieved the way things stand at the moment. I do not disagree with anything you said. Only answering the question of the comment above mine.
Yeah. People heavily romanticise revolution; and they forget how many innocent bystanders wind up dead.
People also forget that social change can happen without painting the streets with blood. General strikes, and demonstrations, have achieved a lot over the last 150ish years. It’s not like no one ever dies when public outrage is strong enough to support a protest movement; but it’s very different from throwing the folks we don’t like to an angry mob, and watching as they are literally torn apart.
I want to see things change because I don’t want to see my fellow Australians die meaningless, needless, deaths. I don’t want to read about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to stay warm in their homes, or dying of treatable illnesses that went untreated/undiagnosed because of rising medical costs. I might joke about building a guillotine with my mates, but I don’t want to see people start killing each other; and I only hope the folks who insist full revolt is what they want, say so in ignorance of what it would require.
All the "somebody elses" that you can vote for are exactly the same in that respect, in that they serve their own interests before the interests of the nation. And if there is one or two individuals that are different, their ability to affect meaningful change is completely neutered. The idea that because it's a "democracy" (which, news flash, it isn't) there is always an appropriate and reasonable choice is completely laughable. As far as the democracy part, democracy means rule by the people. If you think that the system we have would be called rule by the people, then I've got several bridges to sell you.
Yes, but do you think there is a realistic chance any of them will ever get enough votes to actually affect change, and more importantly, if and when they do, do you think it is likely that they will end up being no better than current options?
Not really a factor to consider at the moment, considering the revolution isn't going to happen, lol. All you are doing is raising a pointless hypothetical, instead of discussing in good faith. Revolutions in the past worked this out. The point of the revolution is that it rebalances the inequalities and wealth/power disparities that currently exist (and that are highly likely to get a lot worse before any meaningful change occurs).
We have a farm. It became cheaper to shoot sheep than send them to market. The local abs are making a fortune as they buy all the rock bottom sheep at market. Lots of people are making a lot of money off meat but it isn’t the farmers.
Abattoirs are a barely functional racquet. You can't operate them without specific oversight. The positions that provide that oversight are so leanly staffed that they did 2 one hour strikes and got basically everything they asked for. Makes it very hard to open a new one.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-08/meat-inspectors-and-vets-strike-disrupts-meat-exports/103077208
Film it. Make it viral.
"This Bullet Cost me $0.05, and a 5 year gun licence is $20 per year."
"This Sheep Cost me $x to raise and grow to a weight suitable for market, and they pay me $y per kg for the whole animal (less than $x), [which puts me below the poverty line working 14hr days, 7 days a week]."
"Shooting the sheep on the farm, and selling the carcass instead makes me $z, which means I can afford to eat/sleep/pay interest to the bank."
"Meat prices in supermarkets the week I filmed this video are $12 per kg.. etc"
This is because noone here actually protests.
I mean properly as a nation or even people
Paris is hosting Olympics and trying to cleanse the Seine for triathlon. This is coming from taxpayers money. Taxpayers said no, government said yes, so people will do a mass shit in the river to fuck with their cleaning plans. Is that the correct answer? Don't know, but it gets the results
Here, everyone just puts up with government incompetence
I lived in a country that capped staple foods at times of holiday as otherwise there was massive price gouging. They policed it and issued massive fines. In a country known for its capitalism, no one questioned it. ACCC has no teeth and politicians have no balls
While price drops in the base product should be reflected at the retail end, it is not always the case.
The problem is when the price of meat drops the prices of the other inputs into the system do not. Petrol goes up, insurance goes up, cost of labor (or labor-related issues), etc all add to the price of the end product. You can also only sell so much meat, dropping the price of a $10 steak to $1 doesn't mean you will sell 10x more to cover costs.
Lamb drops in price, so it gets sent via a truck whose transport costs just went up due to fuel costs, to an abattoir whose labor costs just increased because fewer people want to cut meat for living, then back on another truck with raised fuel costs and raised insurance costs, to another distribution centre with fixed labor costs but raising electricity costs etc.
Not saying profiteering does not happen, but when all costs are generally increasing then it seems a natural part of the system.
Most of our bars and nightclubs died in our area with the tax increases. They never made much on beer, most of it comes from gambling and food sales.
Australia exports a lot more than when I was younger, I would not be surprised if that's put some upward pressure on at least beef. The quality certainly went down at Coles/Woolworths.
Insurance is such a huge contributor. Those farmers paying higher and higher insurance every year, their distributors, etc, and selling to you for the same cost. Lamb prices go up and finally they have a bit of breathing space? Of course they’ll keep them there.
Fuck insurance companies.
No because EVERY single manufacturer has realized they can charge more and get away with it.
This is not just a Woolworths/Coles problem.
They might get reigned in but who's going to stop Unilever or Nestle?
People don’t understand the real culprit is insurance company: every business on the supply chain needs insurance as a legal requirement. Therefore, 2% insurance increases cascades like compound interest
Eg
- one business: $100 * 2% = $102
- five in a chain: $100 * (1 + 2%)^5 = $110.4
The result is 10% increase of retail pricing when there is 2% at each level
I think you hit the nail on the head here - Insurance premiums have largely shot up because of shortage in materials and labour which has been driven by excess demand for construction; natural disasters, COVID, too much infrastructure building relative to the economy, QLD hosting Olympics & wasteful stimulus (looking at the homebuilder scheme here - entire suburbs using this for home renovations to push up the price of houses).
What would also help would be reserving gas for the East coast and cutting the GST from electricity. That would cut energy costs by 9% immediately across every step in the supply chain from farm, to processing, to distribution/storage to retail...
You are on the money with insurance premiums. Something to note: previously I used an insurance broker as at various stages I had multiple policies across multiple vehicles, businesses and properties and they always got me good deals with whoever but in the past 2 years every quote they were getting me was absolutely ridiculous and jumps of 30-40-50% were being presented, they only really used the big east coast insurers. Ended up insuring everything with RAC WA as the prices were easily a third of what their competitors were offering and on par with what I was paying previously.
RACQ or RACV were much more expensive I'm assuming it's because WA does not get the natural disasters over east gets with the flooding, fires and cyclones etc and RAC only insure people in WA.
If you are in WA see what RAC can do for you. If you are over east sorry I can't help you.
But if there's only one or two companies in a supply chain, they only pay 2-4% but still charge the consumer 10-15%.
The issue isn't that there's increasing costs at each level, it's capitalism as a whole, which says "make as much money as you can, because fuck everyone who's NOT you".
agriculture supply > farmer > food processing > distributor > supermarket
I agree that greed is the main factor, but no one going after insurance is just insane (innocent ignorance)
The real real culprit is investors, which force businesses to make not profit, but growth, an exponentially moving goalpost. Every insurance company has investors. So do Coles and Woolies, and distributors, and more.
If companies only sought to make a profit, prices would probably be far more reasonable. But due to the need to pay investors or risk them pulling out, profit just isn’t good enough.
People blame Colesworth because that's who they interact with day to day not knowing other companies make significantly more money in nominal terms, real terms and at the margins. Commbank margins are ~10% and mining company margins are over 20% yet people are crying that Colesworth have 4% margins because Walmart and UK supermarkets have 2% margins, makes no sense lol. Aldi has ~10% margins (can't get exact numbers since they're not public, estimate based on how much tax they pay) and most of that money is going back to Germany.
And it's not just manufacturers and it's not just big business. It's literally fucking everyone. We got a building quote from a local builder. We didn't go ahead with the work until a year later, so he had to re-quote. His quote doubled. Why? Because he said materials had gone up 20%. It wasn't a "fuck off" price or a punishment for not going ahead with the work, everyone else quoted a similar price.
Every cunt who can is not just raising their price, they're using inflation as a scapegoat to increase their margins, therefore causing more inflation. Every cunt who can't raise their price (i.e. non essential business) is going out of business because they can't keep up.
And when you can’t set your price and are price takers, you are fucked.
The farmers take the brunt of inflation here through costs to produce food and fibre.
Welcome to capitalism-enabled Narcissism. It's literally rewarded in our current culture which is why it's becoming the norm, when in fact it's incredibly unhealthy for both sides despite the perceived benefit to one side.
Little do they all realize how this ends. What benefits everyone benefits you, too - they can't see that. The reverse becomes a big problem. You play zero-sum games with the world, and eventually things give out. Consistent growth is unsustainable, and it doesn't take a genius to see where these roads lead.
> it doesn't take a genius to see where these roads lead.
It really doesn't. But it does take pulling our head out of our collective arse, which has been buried so deep by status quo maintenance ideology we can taste stomach acid.
I thought it was because manufacturers were having to pay upwards of 25% more for raw materials when the world was opening back up after covid and supply worked to catch back up with demand. But I am not really on top of.all the nuances that impacts inflation
What other proof one needs that having a poorly regulated market doesn’t help? What good does an inquiry do?
In 2020 ACCC started investigating why Kaufland had to abandon Australian market. What was the result of that? Bigger profits for the duopoly and increase in cost of living for everyone.
How about actually doing something: review the legislations and update it. What’s up with those colesworth that have every week more than half of the stock marked with various fake deals when actually everything is more and more expensive?
Look at how others dealt with fake promotions and surcharges, for instance:
>Misleading price reduction claims
>
>Price reduction claims such as “was € 50, now € 25” can be misleading if the initial selling price (known as “anchor price”) has been inflated. In all EU countries traders are obliged, when offering a discount, to indicate the lowest price applied to the item at least 30 days before the announcement of the price reduction.
This information allows you as a consumer to assess whether the discount is genuine or not.
>
Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-pricing/index_en.htm
>Card surcharges are not allowed
>
>You're not allowed to charge your customers extra for using a credit or debit card. This applies to all card purchases (in shops and online) made throughout the EU.
>
Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-funding/making-receiving-payments/electronic-cash-payments/index_en.htm
Lets say the government goes to take action against colesworth, because we live in a democracy the government has to prove their action is justified, legal and in proportion. If they can't prove that, then the courts will overrule and reject the governments action. The inquiry is the way the government gets its proof.
That court action can take years, if at the end you get rejected then you'll have wasted years for no result. This is the main reason why divestment/breakup powers were ruled out as ineffective. Colesworth would fight it as long as they could in the court system, the breakup itself would be very complex, would be a decade before the breakup is completed.
But we have cost of living pressure now, any action taken has to have a faster response time. So the appropriate approach is inquiry -> public shaming -> government regulation action including fines or monitoring. We got to this place by the undermining of the ACCC with budget cuts and appointment of a more commercial friendly leader by the LNP even then it took years, getting back to a good place again could take a while.
> What good does an inquiry do? In 2020 ACCC started investigating why Kaufland had to abandon Australian market. What was the result of that? Bigger profits for the duopoly and increase in cost of living for everyone.
Kaufland never existed in Australia, so how do you figure them cancelling their plans to enter the market caused profits to increase? Well, it didn't. Coles profit each year since 2020 has been 2.6%, 2.6%, 2.7%, 2.7%.
> What’s up with those colesworth that have every week more than half of the stock marked with various fake deals
Such as? Every time this topic comes up you're in the comments complaining about fake deals, but you never have a single example of it happening. **What are these fake deals?**
> Look at how others dealt with fake promotions and surcharges, for instance:
We have laws against fake promotions and surcharges as well. I'm pretty sure I've told you this before, but I guess you don't have such a good memory.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/pricing/price-displays
Just because member prices are a shitty practice doesn't mean they are fake deals. What's fake about them? They're also not hiding anything, so I don't really know what you're trying to say.
I am surprised people keep paying for fast food at the current prices. Poor quality, shrunk, garbage... If people actually voted with their wallets it would turn around.
Because the decision isn’t to eat fast food, it’s “I don’t want cook” and nobody can afford takeaway restaurants any more. $60 for some Thai or $25 for a bucket of chicken.
Not everyone, no. But it is at least [13%](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-15/exclusive-disturbing-number-of-australians-living-in-substandard/102484354) of us, which is a huge number.
100k? lol more like 30-60k. 10 years ago I was living in a shoebox unit along side 5 others paying around $220 a week. Out of curiosity I looked up the public sales register and the person who owned it paid 60k for the whole lot. My partner lived there 3 years before I moved in, and we moved out 2 years later. When we did we got a full transaction history from the real estate and over the 5 years we paid a bit over 55k.
Absolutely disgusting.
House PPOR is exempt on from asset test. Most of the boomer retirees I know live in a paid off 1.5m family home or luxury apartment, 500k in super and are getting a part-pension (mainly for the concession discounts and fortnightly energy supplement). The 500k is earning them $20k a year in tax free dividend/interest payments.
Remember when everyone was recommending pub meals instead of takeaway? Now it's $36 Parmas and a plastic takeaway container of curry for $28. Yeah nah.
Aside from a Friday kebab from our local ($13-14 each) and some chocolate to celebrate surviving another week of this banal existence, we don't get take-out anymore, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Everything costs far too much and the quality is either lacking or wildly inconsistent. All the fees tacked onto the order can add anywhere from $2-3 to $7-8 dollars to it too. Fuck that.
We went to our local for the first time in over a year. I didn't even look at the prices, just ordered a burger and two minimum chips. My jaw nearly hit the floor when the cashier said, "That's $29..." $8 for minimum chips. The pizza oven just went to the top of the project list. It will pay for itself in a year or two.
> All the fees tacked onto the order can add anywhere from $2-3 to $7-8 dollars to it too.
Can't forget that online prices are already inflated, we don't do it at all but it's always fun to see what an order will be between the two, $30 in person, or 58$ online with higher prices + fees, it's absurd.
Fast Food / Takeaway has absolutely shifted from a Convinience to a Luxury. We're priced out now, for one person it can be justified, two is bloody expensive tenable and we're a family of five. It's basically Hot Chips or Pizza for Takeaways if we want them fed.
Some places are charging 1.50 to 2 dollars for 1 dim sim! The rip offs on the cheapest and what was the most affordable food is the most extreme.
Its staggering how a chicken shops 5.5 of large chips you almost cant eat there's just so much, yet you wonder what happened to the disappearing chips in the KFC/McDonalds/Red Rooster large chips rip off with half full boxes. Before you could find most of the lost Chips at the bottom of the McDonalds bag, now they don't even oblige you with this rip off compensation.
The greed and rip offs are really out of control. Its like Australia has evolved into dog eat dog vulture culture.
Thai is one of the best effort to reward ratios too IMHO. Compared to say Indian it's MUCH lower effort to cook most Thai meals and yet they still taste amazing.
It's the value proposition that's probably comes from both. A $9 quick/dirty/easy meal then was more appealing than an $18 one now, even though I earn more money nowadays.
So I rarely ever buy takeaway or fast food these days, last night my partner went out for a movie with a friend, I put our daughter to bed and was pretty exhausted from the day, figured I might treat myself to some fish and chips and a few potato cakes and calamari rings since I haven’t had that in a couple of years. Jumped online to order, small chips 8.50, piece of flake 14.50, potato cakes 6.50 each, calamari 5 each. This was all for 1 person, not even for a whole family. I ended up just having cheese on toast and went to bed.
The most basic simple Aussie takeaway that every level of our society used to be able to enjoy has slipped out of reach for a lot of people. I don’t know about anyone else but that’s pretty fucking sad in my book.
When folks tell me they did a maccas run I say why it's shit and expensive, it's not the same as 15 years ago or older. It's like they are stuck in the habit and feels like divorce to not go there. I can't get through to them, they reply with oh but I got a chips and big Mac for $x on the app. The savings feel outweighs the sensible. They're generally overweight so I guess too the sugar monsters need to be fed in their brain or they get mad. I said delete the app then (worked for me).
Yep and when was the last time you got fries from them that were actually crispy. KFC is just as bad, both never cook them properly now.
Shrinking portions, sloppily trained staff, higher percentage of lazy staff. Being underpaid and young, I don’t blame them for not giving a shit.
Anyone over 50 that worked in fast food in their past probably did it in the 80’s and we didn’t know shit. The money was fine as cost of living was fine. We blew most of it on southern comfort and lemon ruskis or car stereos anyway.
Nowadays the kids know that their hourly rates are fucked, the owner is a greedy, often sleazy shit, the cost of living is fucked and they’re pissed that they have to work until midnight at Hungry Jacks because of these stupid always open trading hours we have now.
If you’re a supermarket close at 6. If you’re a fast food place close at 8. Open late sunday. Hell, even close one day a week. Give your staff time off. Turn off the lights when you’re shut, your bills will go down.
I dunno, maybe i’m living in the past. Meanwhile though support from young people for the 2 major parties is the lowest it’s ever been because of reasons like this. They’re Gen X and boomer filled parties that seem to not give one iota of a shit for Gen Y and younger people.
Labor are in a position to actually make change that fixes things and win young voters but seem unwilling to. The Libs and Nationals won’t as they care about those groups even less.
At least we’re no UK or USA, the political systems in those countries are FUCKKKKKKKED, but we seem to have very few progressive thinkers and we’re heading down a road I do not like.
I agree with the rich gotta be rich, that's for sure. Almost like big corp cuts the tiny corner, see what happens, saved some money, oh look still good business, do it again. Over time, that adds up. But to the big fan, they keep going. Like when someone says "do you like my haircut" when you see them every week, you hardly notice they get it done weekly. There are great businesses, family owned/run, who may charge more but make a far better meal, and better for you. And we're not supposed to eat out every day; it's meant to be a treat. We eat out so often, big corp keep opening stores. There's great articles on KFC growth overseas - it's insane. Where does all that chicken come from so quickly? You don't want to know! And the people serving you, cooking it, handling it - they don't want that job, it's a this will do, or worse, they can't get a better one - imagine how it's all handled. No thanks! No pride in those places. I spend my money where reputation matters, on occassion, and simply don't return if it turns bad (like an owner change). Subway was that for me, great stores, proud staff, then it went to shit and costs were cut and now owners who've been suckered in to buy a shop (aka, new Australians) come in, work hard but are under the rules of head office and the quality is lame yet the price is high. We all have to go back to making more of a self effort, like visit the butcher, buy great food, prep, reheat at work, feel full, don't even consider a maccas or KFC or even Grill'd now is getting cheaper with the ingredients. My rant is cause I am an older dude but I've experienced when people were proud to work in fast food because their boss was and so was head office - not now, it's money first, quality later and as long as customers flood in, why change? Then when the make a loss, close that store, that's Ok loads of money elsewhere and people who need that job are now out. Bad as Bonza - great people working, amazing in fact, but big corp in the USA says nah fck yez all we can't even pay for the football team we bought, nor the planes we lease off ourselves, so to hell with the businesses and tourism regional towns built business off us flying in and out, or those in rural areas to see family in cities. I hate when corporate takeovers are approved - reminds me of the general store on the corner shoved out by supermarkets, now we get a servo on every corner instead. I could go on!
Every time I craved it in the last decade, I instantly regretted buying it as it isn't what I remembered. However, it was walking in just before the pandemic and seeing no staff and a giant iPad to order off that actually made me walk out and never return again.
Nope.
For prices to drop a period of “deflation“ is needed.
What normally happens is that “inflation” drops or slows down. Meaning prices that were going up by say 8% a year, are now going up by 2% a year.
(Almost) all price increases will remain, but their increases will slow down, but not get cheaper.
Exactly this, reduced inflation just means prices increase at a slower rate. Deflation is very rare and economic policy makers try to avoid it like the plague because it has the potential to crash the entire economy via a [deflationary spiral](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1888/economics/deflationary-spiral/). People see prices going down, they avoid spending thinking prices will go down more, which they then do. Reduced prices eventually mean less money available for wages, people lose their jobs. Repeat until the entire economy is in flames.
The only long-term solution to high cost of living is higher wages and a higher supply of goods and services.
I’ve been having the same intense thought for the last 5 years, and minimally thinking that for the decade before.
I now doubt it.
The property developers are holding onto all the vacant land, on the outskirts of Sydney (and most likely all big cities), some that already has DA approval, and slowly release it to deliberately keep prices high.
The current federal gov, the most progressive of the two political parties, is doing nothing about making more houses. Their 10m houses in the next decade promise is only 50k more than the last decade. They are not building more government houses to flood the market with cheap houses to change the market. They are doing nothing to make property developers to build more houses and flats.
The federal gov mostly relies on mining/gas and housing to balance the federal budget. They can’t afford to let the housing market crash as it will totally ruin the Australian economy, with no other industry to fill the gap.
Politically there is no will to fix the situation. With the defeat of Shorten/Labour a decade ago, fixing housing is now known to be an election losing policy. There LNP will make sure of that.
Only one federal politician does not own property. All own one house, most own multiple. Couple this with Lobbyists and political donations to political parties being hidden, there is more influence in Canberra to not reduce property prices.
The only hope is for the younger voters to out number the boomers. And this is going to take over a decade. Or for poverty in Australia to rise to the point that people start rioting (like the French over raised retirement age). But that will never happen as Aussies are too complacent. “No worries”, “she’ll be right”.
I hope I’m wrong.
One of the hardest lessons I've learned over the 23 years of my adult life is that the bubble absolutely does not have to pop. I've heard that line my entire life, whether it's about food, houses, fuel etc and yet it's never happened.
Even here in /r/australia, people have been saying that the housing bubble will pop any moment and that they're going to sweep in and grab something cheap for at least a decade. One thing I'm certain of is that house prices are never getting back to where they were a decade ago, let alone 15+ years.
The bubble did pop in the GFC, when housing prices dropped by 10-20% in the USA (only about 5-10% here). But as we all saw, even that was only a blip and soon it was all higher than ever.
This isn't a bubble. Inflation isn't a bubble, it doesn't "pop" and go backwards like the stock market or house prices.
If inflation were to drop through the floor the reserve bank would be doing everything possible to bring it back up.
Deflation on paper might sound like a good thing but it really isn't.
If I understand correctly, the general idea is that in a well-functioning market inflation needs to slow down to a point that it is below wage growth, and wages grow to catch up. The problem is our current markets don’t reward wage growth, they reward wage suppression. Something is (or many things are) off. It’s unionisation, it’s the media suppressing actual thought in favour of gotcha moments and rage bait. It’s politicians responding to that in the media. Our system of regulated capitalism is still the best system, it’s generally the least susceptible to corruption, the one that makes like better for most. The problem is that it relies on public opinion, and public opinion is easy to manipulate.
Agreed.
Capitalism was the best system for bringing people out of poverty, moving 3rd world economies to 2nd and 1st world.
But something is wrong when Billionaires can flourish, are allowed to exist, when the middle class is on the decline- decreased home ownership, university too expensive…
I don’t think must people realise how big a billion is when compared to a million.
- A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 11,500 days. 31.5 years.
- 2 weeks vs 31.5 years!
- When this refers to money, how much bigger a billion is when compared to a million; someone owning a billion dollars is obscene. Literally obscene.
- And there is soon going to be Trillionaires. 11,574,074 days.
- If some was born when Christ was born and earned $1000 a day ($365,000 per annum), spent nothing, they still wouldn’t be a billionaire.
Woolworths and Coles needing to exceed their billion $$ profits to prove they are successful. Banks making 10s of billions in profits.
We have now passed the point where private companies and contractors are more cost efficient than government services. Government services cost way less than private.
There has to be something after capitalism. Not socialism or communism, they are inherently too corrupt.
I don’t know what is next.
I kept saying during covid it wouldn't go down. They'd just use more excuses to keep everything high cause we all need to eat (same goes for fuel)
I'm lucky I have farmers markets and such near by.
Others are not as lucky
What I find hilarious is that in the ACT the farmers (around Canberra in NSW) got the shits with Colesworth and rather than a weekend farmer market (which still happens) they pooled together and opened their own farm to store super market that is open 7 days a week.
It has been going gangbusters. It is near the Costco so you have people coming and doing mass bulk shopping. It is crazy how cheap everything is as well. I could go to Coles or Woolies for a quarter cabbage for 9 bucks or I can spend 3 or so bucks for a full head of cabbage instead.
They also have nearly everything Coles and Woolies have in terms of fresh produce, meats, seafoods, dairy, nuts, artisan goods and breads. Multiple businesses came together to bring it to life.
The quality is there and you are supporting local businesses.
Yeah, so in Canberra there are 4 farmer markets. A couple are now open 7 days a week. The only one working on Saturday only is the one in epic park with a rotating roster of famers coming in.
The new store the same businesses (from the epic farmer market) signed up with the Harris farm markets which opened up near Costco. So the guys who would come down every 2 weeks with seafood or the specialist mushrooms or the honey shop that comes down once a month or the peeps who make vinegars and oils and such along with the artisan good makers of speciality cheeses, meats and such. All have their brands in that Canberra store.
Some businesses that are in Canberra like 3 mills bakery and our local butcher have setup shop in the new store location as well. Same with the seafood Business that runs out of Batemans bay, now has a shop front in that store. Having online delivery for food as well has been awesome too.
Those same businesses still come to epic to sell direct so I had a chance to talk to some of the people / owners and they are happy as can be. You can still buy their products direct for a bit cheaper but the mark up at Harris is sweet fa.
The other farm markets the stalls have turned into permanent stores now. With some locations getting renovated to become their own giant permanent markets.
That story makes me happy for about 8 seconds, then I realised Colesworth have probably pooled their lawyers together to find a technicality to shut them down.
(or just give a lobbyist another 20g to pay off a pollie).
Would be interested to see how they would do that. I made another comment about the 4 farmer markets in Canberra. The one near Costco is a Harris farm markets where farmers and businesses from the epic park farmer market signed up to sell stock.
The other 3 locations have turned into perm locations where the stalls have turned into stores. The ACT government is in charge in relation to where shops can open, especially when it comes to chain stores (as we have no council government it is all state level). So Woolies or Coles trying to buy the land will be blocked by the ACT government as they don't allow multiple Woolies or Coles in the same location. Where these markets are there is a Woolies or Coles not even 500m away.
Or they open up a ColesWorth nearby and go lower and put them out that way. I've noticed this in my nearby area.
I highly doubt bananas can really differ in $2 like a few suburbs away, but the Coles 2 suburbs away from me charge bananas for like $2 a kg, and so does the local grocer.
But my suburb? It's $4.5 with no competition around.
Am I the only one that finds it weird that when people talk about cost of living they always seem to focus on groceries, I'm like that's nothing compared to rent and home prices . Get that back under control and we're golden.
Does the cost of living (food) ever actually go down significantly? I thought we just had a long period of fairly flat prices which makes this steep rise of the past couple of years so much worse. Restaurant prices were also flat for a long time but instead of 2 per cent a year rises we just got a sudden 10-20% jump.
I notice there are eating places that used to be bonkers busy, now they have spare seats. Ones that are amazing and with reputation still look ok, but if you're second rate I see many empty tables even no one dining. Definitely effecting many watching their budget but there's plenty too that they are still ok through life choices (eg, paid off their mortgage, did well with stocks, have a well paid career they've worked up to). Others too just don't give a shit and have no intention of say investing in retirement so stuff it spend up now. I for one have halved my eating out and meal prep properly which has countered the big spend. I don't think this is temporary and not the first time prices have risen. I absolutely think companies are taking the piss. I went to buy car wax yesterday, went up 40%. As if it costs that much more to make that stuff. It's been 2yrs. So I bought a cheaper one to keep my old car ok since new ones of those are still stupid in price. We're all smashed by it somehow and it's shit.
The article assumes the enquiries are something more than obfuscatory optics designed by government & big business to keep people from rioting
Group A (govt/big business revolving door)
- PwC treason - nobody to blame
- Robodebt - nobody to blame
- consumers and farmers being ripped off - nobody to blame
- sovereign gas theft while our elderly go cold - nobody to blame
- Qantas
- numerous examples of politicians selling out our nation for personal gain - gee willickers!
Group B (people who call truth to power)
- Julian Assange - 14 years imprisoned
- Friendly Jordies - firebombed and SLAPP lawsuited
- David McBride
- Bernard Collaery
The first step is realising government is not working for us.
I get shouted down on here when I point out Australia’s is absolutely a corrupt country. Just because we’re not a banana republic (we’re close) doesn’t change anything
We are the 52nd US state, existent to have our resources pilfered, wallets plundered, and assets sold to the highest overseas bidder. Source: every single anti-civilian policy for the last 25 years.
FYI It is cheaper to buy Australian Beef per kg that has been shipped to Japan, get prepped and packaged in a superior way in a Japanese Supermarket.
https://www.beefcentral.com/news/comparison-suggests-aussie-beef-retailed-in-japan-is-cheaper-than-in-australia/
ACCC is a paper tiger, they’re only in place for the government to say “look we’re not corrupt.”
Even when they investigate someone the get a slap on the wrist, but good luck getting them to get off their asses and look into something.
Cost of living in Australia is insane.
The place I was renting for $2400/month back in 2018 is now $4400. It was a garbage heap in Surry Hills. No renovations no nothing, besides fixing the roof that would have it raining in the living room every time there was a storm. But also lucky that the flooring was so bad that it would just seep through and not pool 😂
And then you spend $400/week on groceries. Hot? $400/month electricity bill. Cold? $400/month electricity bill. Fuel is $1.80/litre. Income tax rate is, what, 38%. Average house price is $1 million. Work in the city? $100/week for train rides that aren't tax deductible. A whopper and a cheeseburger with some fries and nuggets is $25. Make it make sense.
Is there any evidence of cost of groceries going down? Canada had enquires to shrinkflation but what has to be done for us? Mass protests? I’d love to protest but I’m too busy working three jobs to try to pay for rent and groceries
Not for groceries, but for meats.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/monthly-consumer-price-index-indicator/may-2024
It's consistently been actually deflation for months. Granted this on the back of like 15% inflation last year, but that's some evidence that it's been dropping.
I don't shop at coles or woolies anymore, and I'm back to spending $50-$80 for a full week of groceries for 2 people
Local markets/butchers/grocers is the way.
STOP GIVING THESE THIEVING CUNTS YOUR MONEY
There's a lot of people saying there's not enough competition... But I think it's mostly that Australians as a whole are lazy and keep shopping at Coles/Woolworths. (Note this isn't as true in regional/rural areas)
I do what you do, save plenty. But I for the life of me, can't convince anyone to shop at the aldi/grocers/butcher etc
My nearest town of 10,000 has a Coles, IGA, FoodWorks, Aldi, and two independent butchers. IGA and FoodWorks are easily 20-25% more expensive than Coles and Aldi on dry goods. The butchers are as expensive or more expensive as the most expensive supermarket meat available in town, although probably better quality. If you're really on a budget, Coles and Aldi are still the least expensive one stop shop. I don't think IGA or FoodWorks apply any downward pressure on prices here. It's a 50 minute round trip to a larger town, so many small towns may have the illusion of choice, but there's no real competition on prices.
>it's mostly that Australians as a whole are lazy and keep shopping at Coles/Woolworths.
Bingo. I've been to shopping centres with green grocers in the same vicinity as shitworths and idiots are buying produce in the gouging shop rather than walking 2 minutes to buy cheap produce in the green grocer. Utter brain dead people everywhere.
Literally this
I make a similar comment on every colesworth hate post, and still everyone complains that it's too hard to drive an extra 15 minutes to get to a local store.
They are the problem and refuse to believe it.
If everyone thought like this, local stores would have the funds to better themselves, and the big 2 would be going broke before they could drop prices to keep up. A little community effort goes a long way
Definitely harder in rural areas, I will never argue that
Prices aren't going to go down unless there's suddenly more competition in the market, and that's not something that will happen any time soon. Best most people can hope for is a pay rise beyond inflation
Except for residential land, over the last 80 years, the cost of living, relative to wages, has gone down dramatically.
Clothing, cars, and electronics are all much cheaper.
This is likely to continue.
If we address the poor public policy, like negative gearing, that has allowed housing to become expensive, things will be golden.
Yup - the key to all this really, is housing policy. Remember that cheap generic products in the supermarket are only a new thing relatively. With cheaper housing, comes less pressure on budgets so consumers can actually afford to shop elsewhere.
Does anyone else hear about the investigations and imagine a little Team America UN puppet walking around the Woolies accounting department?
"Stop sabotaging the economic repair, or else."
"Or else what?"
"Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are."
One thing that Covid taught big corporations is that they can keep increasing their margins on essential items and people have no choice but to buy them and they can get away with it.
Grocery prices don’t go down with economic relief. I don’t remember a time in my life they ever have.
Supermarket chains exist to benefit their shareholders, no more no less. They aren’t a community service.
Say you pay $5 now for 2L of Milk. And milk wholesales to Coles at say 0.80c per litre. If things changed and milk went down to 0.50c per litre, the milk is still going to be $5, and the farmers will be even more screwed than what the supermarkets already do to them.
Because this then pays greater dividends to the shareholders.
Capitalism at its finest.
Now they know we CAN pay this, they have absolutely no reason to drop prices.
Without government regulation, which won’t happen as big business is in bed with both Labor and liberals, we will be driven to poverty and only the wealthy will be able to afford food.
The media keeps spruiking this upcoming cost of living relief, because it keeps people checking the news every day for updates. But this promise of relief around the corner is fabricated to keep you hooked on checking for the latest details.
Everything's going to continue getting worse until their is a (most likely violent) revolution by the people. To think the government would change any of this while they're the ones going out of their way to make sure it can happen and line their pockets the whole time doesn't make sense. Doesn't matter which party is in charge when none of them are willing to do anything about the most pressing matters affecting people today.
Just FYI
It's not the supermarkets
It's the energy companies, banks oh and hugeeee immigration that is fucking the system.
Running at an overall 6% profit is pretty average.
Gov just wanted a scapegoat.
Nup
We are being skinned alive now
Because they are getting away with massive margins, there isn't any reason for companies to stop gouging.
So profit driven inflation will keep the RBA squeezing people with mortgages.
It's a bit fucking awful.
In Aldi this week, I saw a "New" Product advertised for $1.15
Never mind that it's exactly the same product, in the exact same spot on the shelf as it has been since that Aldi opened.
And also nevermind that the previous week, prior to the "New" tag appearing on the digital display label, it was priced at $1.10
And that 6 Months before that, it was $1.05.
And that before then, it had been at $0.95 since we've been buying the item (5+ years).
No, it's now "new" and has a higher price to match.
Please Explain Aldi!
PS - bonus points if you can guess what the item is. Hint, it's non-perishable and comes in a 1.25L bottle.
Just a reminder that on the 24th June, Parliament voted against the following:
"calls on the Government to stop offering bandaid answers to the big crises facing people, and implement all the recommendations of the Greens-led Senate inquiry into supermarket prices, including making price gouging illegal, and supporting the Australian Greens’ Competition and Consumer Amendment (Divestiture Powers) Bill to introduce powers to break up the supermarket duopoly, which would lower the cost of food and groceries."
The recommendations:
* The establishment of a Prices and Competition Commission to examine and monitor prices and price setting across the economy and require supermarkets to publish historical pricing data.
* Price gouging illegal
* Divestiture laws to create power break ups in the duopoly of Australian supermarkets
* That the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct be made mandatory with significant penalties for breaches, and be expanded to greenlife industries and any retailer that stocks food and grocery products
* That the ACCC be given powers to investigate land banking and unfair trading practices.
* Supermarkets be made to adopt mandatory standards for unit pricing, and notify customers of changes in sizes or prices of products, to help prevent shrinkflation
* For the Government to standardise discount and promotional terms, to prevent supermarkets promoting fake discounts.
* For the Government to back stronger health and safety standards for supermarket employees
* Further investigation of the role of multinational food manufacturers in price increases in Australia
* That the National Food Waste Strategy is updated to require supermarkets to publish data on food waste and consider whether unrealistic cosmetic standards are adding to waste.
Only 7 members voted in favour.
> The price will be what people will **be forced to** pay. Without significant competition this will always be tuned for the highest profits.
Fixed that for you. You are right, without competition that’s what happens.
the cost of living isn't ever going to significantly decrease. short term price spikes aside, people need to understand that inflation defines the new normal.
It's a wild time, that's for sure. I specifically remember about 20 years ago when we were in the grip of a drought. Lamb prices, not beef though, for some reason, went through the roof. We were assured that prices would drop when the drought ended. Well, the drought ended, and they knew people were now used to paying higher prices, so there it stayed. Same with beer, flashy pub down the road sells beer for $11 a schooner, regular pubs see that it doesn't seem to harm patronage so they bump up the price themselves, a little bit of grumbling, wait that out and boom! $11 schooners are the norm
Capitalism's Ratchet
"You _will_ own _nothing_ **and** _be happy_ about it. After all, *any* amount of _s^oc^ia^l^i^sm_ is _so much worse_ - Stalin and Gulags, _am I right_? _You don't want Stalin and Gulags, right? RIGHT?! {RAISES FIST}_" Wikipedia, what is an abusive relationship?
Absolutely- meat prices rose though the roof for about a year and a half during COVID times after a mega drought caused shortages. They dropped to rock bottom prices about a year ago and haven’t recovered since. But it hasn’t stopped the supermarkets and middlemen gouging the farmers and consumers. The agriculture minister does nothing. The ACCC does nothing, everyone sits on their hands while Australians go broke and hungry. It’s never going to go down unless massive changes take place to eradicate corruption and price fixing
Next thread in r/Australia, calling all Australians to brainstorm how to actually eradicate corruption and price fixing within the next one year.
Regulations. The kind you're only going to get from a progressive party that doesn't prioritise the profits of big businesses over the lives of the people they're supposed to be fighting for. That's it. That's all we need. Neoliberals are constantly complaining about regulations because once upon a time, they put a stop to this kind of rampant greed. We don't need to decapitate anyone. We don't need to give rich executives even more wealth because they've pinkie promised it will trickle down. We dont need to burn everything down and switch to some other kind of "ism". We don't even need to bikeshed about the 1000 different ways we could address this problem until we find some perfect solution that doesn't exist. We just need to pry greedy scumbags out of our political parties so they no longer get to decide what laws greedy scumbags have to follow.
Exactly this. The system worked before and can be made to work again. Just fix the deficiencies. Make sure that markets benefit the majority. Cripple corporate power so that they can't use it to exploit others for profit. Nationalise anything that has a natural monopoly. Reduce barriers of entry for things that work best with market competition. Break up corporations that have too much market power.
And if they even get a whif of it they’ll spend hundreds of millions campaigning for the LNP with Rolex tradies.
Oh they absolutely will. For all the pageantry of their "left wing neoliberal vs right wing neoliberal" play fights, they actually have incredible class solidarity when it matters. They'll immediately unite to paint the party as crazies who just don't understand the complex economics of bullshit neoliberalism that never works. The attacks will come from every breed of politician, to be broadcast on every TV station, cheered on by an army of sock puppets. But the same is true for literally any move that threatens their profits and if we can't achieve "this only less greedy", we're sure as fuck not going to be able to do Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
Myopic and naive. Your assertion is essentially that if we leave in place the incentive structure from whence these 'greedy scumbags' grow, the environment which shapes and naturally selects for them, and push them back a bit it'll all work out. As if it would be anything more than at best rolling back the clock. Anything but acknowledging the "corruption", the greed, the wetiko, are emergent properties of a system based on money, markets, and private profits. All the pious wishing in the world doesn't make it possible to decouple that from capitalism. What we're seeing is not a perversion of an otherwise benign or salvageable system. This is what you get: exponential consolidation of wealth and power into fewer and fewer, ever more ruthless hands. Without changing the paradigm of the mode of production it's all lipstick on a pig, and all of this feckless reformism gives aid and comfort to the ruling class.
"At best rolling back the clock"? Rolling back the clock sounds fucking awesome. Roll it back to when people could own their own homes, universities were free, unions were strong, doctors all bulk billed, consumer goods didn't rely on the exploitation and oppression of foreign workers and taking a few months off work to fuck around wasn't a catastrophe you might never recover from. Not only would that be fucking awesome, its an *incredibly easy* vision to sell people. It's literally just "what the boomers had before they decided they were entitled to everyone else's share too". Plus, as a cherry on top, it doesn't involve the dubious morality of roaming the country lynching people based on their tax bracket. You just make laws and charge the executives who break them. If you're willing to reject *all of that* outright just because it's not your own instant, made-to-measure utopia, then it sounds to me that you're not actually interested in building a better, fairer society at all, you're just another psychopath that wants a turn on the guillotine. The reality is that capitalism, communism, socialism, libertarianism or anarchism are all just irrelevant bikeshedding. If you're unable to ethically and effectively strip greedy people of their power, every single one of them will fail. So if you want to spend the rest of your life trying to explain communism to Sky News viewers, you go right ahead. Just don't get in the way of people trying to solve a problem that you'd have to solve anyway.
This is not an easy vision to sell - unions are thugs, universities are elitist ivory tower academics telling you what to do because they think they're better than you, the public health system is terrible - just look at the waiting lists (you'd be much better on private health insurance), regulations to ensure that businesses don't exploit people or damage the environment are so much red/green tape stifling our amazing productivity and making you pay more for goods and services. And a not insignificant portion of the voting public believe all of this, and will vote for people who are interested in making wealthy people wealthier because they say that the other guys are in favour of thugs, elitism, and making sure that your lights go out. This is why we will not have the clock rolled back to apoint where any of those nice things you asked for will actually happen untils something fairly significant changes.
Nice politically illiterate strawman, and you've chosen to deal with the problem of leaving the seeds of disaster in fertile ground with "that sounds great actually". Did you just graduate from the kindergarten school of debate? Reformists got their way (and only because the ruling class perceived a credible threat of revolution) *generations* ago and the concessions have been steadily eroded ever since. We are living through the fruits of reformism right now, and the cry of reformists ever echoed is "this isn't working, let's do it some more". For brevity we'll just put aside the ecological devastation, the non-negotiable delusion of continuous growth, and the auto-cannibalising inherent to late stage capitalism. A mode of production is not 'irrelevant bikeshedding'. It's the all-pervasive root from which the rest of society is dominantly determined. Thoughts and ideas, ideology, laws, customs, beliefs, all are more products of the material reality and abstractions closer to that reality like relations of production than the other way around. Our society is built on a foundation of extraction, exploitation, and externalisation in the very core mechanics of how we arrange to produce and distribute things. How are we to expect fairness, equity, and stability?
Greed is an emergent property in people that informs our understand of how markets work, it's not a result of the market. I wanted an extra slice of cake at parties well before I heard of Adam Smith.
Wth? Most people just want everyone including themselves to get one slice of cake each and ideally they are all about the same size
A certain amount of greed is to be expected; it's a pro-survival behaviour after all. But not to the extent that it appears under a hegemony that must reproduce selfish and myopic ideology, and make pro-social thought and behaviour as taboo as possible in a social species, in order to perpetuate itself. If this kind of greed was the norm at the hunter-gatherer stage, humans would never have survived long enough to become a threat to the ecosphere.
Solidarity with other movements. People get so pissy about getting inconvenienced because people are marching for climate change or teachers wanting a pay rise and then they tell around and complain that their own lives are shit because nobody cares for them. People would show up and support you and your niche needs if you went and supported others. The other thing is just being involved in politics. The Libs only have something like 40,000 members in a country of 26 million. If you want policies a certain way then show up and get involved.
I saw a comment on another thread today that a moderate liberal is just a Trojan horse. They hold no real party power but they let all the hard conservative cloaks and daggers through the door with them.
Country wide revolution, and the guillotine working overtime. Of course it'll never happen. But that is the only way that will happen. Politicians will never vote against their own interests, and it is not in their interests to reduce business profits, or reduce the ridiculously inflated real estate prices, or anything else, because they all invest in it, hope to work in the industries after leaving politics, out whatever else kickbacks are going on.
The situation isn’t bad enough for this. The bulk of Australians can still pay their mortgage, afford food, Netflix at night and a cheap glass of wine. It needs to be far, far worse for ‘revolution’
It's not going to get better...
The way people think that it'll never happen is why it must happen.
Violent internal revolutions don't tend to stop with just the removal of the Bad People You Don't Like. The French Revolution continued after the execution of Louis XVI through the Reign of Terror and ended up with Napoleon Bonaparte as dictator. The English Civil War continued after the execution of Charles I with battles and massacres and ended up with King Charles II ruling the country. The Russian Revolution continued into the Red Terror and ended up with Stalin as dictator, and many "Red" revolutionaries killed or imprisoned during the purges - not to mention everyone else. The Cambodian civil war resulted in over a million buried in the the Killing Fields - including purged Khmer Rouge members - and Pol Pot as dictator. The Chinese Civil War? Mao, purges, millions of executions and imprisonments (not all of them landlords). The Iranian Revolution? Definitely not more liberal under a theocracy than under the Shah. Are there any "good" internal violent revolutions that you would like to highlight as a model? (American Revolution doesn't count - the UK was effectively an occupying power)
I didn't say it was a good thing, or that it would even be largely a positive thing. I said that it was the only way (short of maybe a global financial collapse), that those objectives could be achieved the way things stand at the moment. I do not disagree with anything you said. Only answering the question of the comment above mine.
Yeah. People heavily romanticise revolution; and they forget how many innocent bystanders wind up dead. People also forget that social change can happen without painting the streets with blood. General strikes, and demonstrations, have achieved a lot over the last 150ish years. It’s not like no one ever dies when public outrage is strong enough to support a protest movement; but it’s very different from throwing the folks we don’t like to an angry mob, and watching as they are literally torn apart. I want to see things change because I don’t want to see my fellow Australians die meaningless, needless, deaths. I don’t want to read about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to stay warm in their homes, or dying of treatable illnesses that went untreated/undiagnosed because of rising medical costs. I might joke about building a guillotine with my mates, but I don’t want to see people start killing each other; and I only hope the folks who insist full revolt is what they want, say so in ignorance of what it would require.
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Democracy would be a good idea.
All the "somebody elses" that you can vote for are exactly the same in that respect, in that they serve their own interests before the interests of the nation. And if there is one or two individuals that are different, their ability to affect meaningful change is completely neutered. The idea that because it's a "democracy" (which, news flash, it isn't) there is always an appropriate and reasonable choice is completely laughable. As far as the democracy part, democracy means rule by the people. If you think that the system we have would be called rule by the people, then I've got several bridges to sell you.
@TerritoryTracks genuine question, have you ever bothered voting for any of the socialist micro parties?
Yes, but do you think there is a realistic chance any of them will ever get enough votes to actually affect change, and more importantly, if and when they do, do you think it is likely that they will end up being no better than current options?
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Not really a factor to consider at the moment, considering the revolution isn't going to happen, lol. All you are doing is raising a pointless hypothetical, instead of discussing in good faith. Revolutions in the past worked this out. The point of the revolution is that it rebalances the inequalities and wealth/power disparities that currently exist (and that are highly likely to get a lot worse before any meaningful change occurs).
We have a farm. It became cheaper to shoot sheep than send them to market. The local abs are making a fortune as they buy all the rock bottom sheep at market. Lots of people are making a lot of money off meat but it isn’t the farmers.
Farmers need to get together imo and start their own abattoir chain and then bypass the market.
Abattoirs are a barely functional racquet. You can't operate them without specific oversight. The positions that provide that oversight are so leanly staffed that they did 2 one hour strikes and got basically everything they asked for. Makes it very hard to open a new one. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-08/meat-inspectors-and-vets-strike-disrupts-meat-exports/103077208
Film it. Make it viral. "This Bullet Cost me $0.05, and a 5 year gun licence is $20 per year." "This Sheep Cost me $x to raise and grow to a weight suitable for market, and they pay me $y per kg for the whole animal (less than $x), [which puts me below the poverty line working 14hr days, 7 days a week]." "Shooting the sheep on the farm, and selling the carcass instead makes me $z, which means I can afford to eat/sleep/pay interest to the bank." "Meat prices in supermarkets the week I filmed this video are $12 per kg.. etc"
Except shooting the sheep doesn't make you any money
This is because noone here actually protests. I mean properly as a nation or even people Paris is hosting Olympics and trying to cleanse the Seine for triathlon. This is coming from taxpayers money. Taxpayers said no, government said yes, so people will do a mass shit in the river to fuck with their cleaning plans. Is that the correct answer? Don't know, but it gets the results Here, everyone just puts up with government incompetence
> It’s never going to go down unless massive changes take place to eradicate corruption and price fixing So no?
True, nothing will ever change.
I lived in a country that capped staple foods at times of holiday as otherwise there was massive price gouging. They policed it and issued massive fines. In a country known for its capitalism, no one questioned it. ACCC has no teeth and politicians have no balls
While price drops in the base product should be reflected at the retail end, it is not always the case. The problem is when the price of meat drops the prices of the other inputs into the system do not. Petrol goes up, insurance goes up, cost of labor (or labor-related issues), etc all add to the price of the end product. You can also only sell so much meat, dropping the price of a $10 steak to $1 doesn't mean you will sell 10x more to cover costs. Lamb drops in price, so it gets sent via a truck whose transport costs just went up due to fuel costs, to an abattoir whose labor costs just increased because fewer people want to cut meat for living, then back on another truck with raised fuel costs and raised insurance costs, to another distribution centre with fixed labor costs but raising electricity costs etc. Not saying profiteering does not happen, but when all costs are generally increasing then it seems a natural part of the system.
Most of our bars and nightclubs died in our area with the tax increases. They never made much on beer, most of it comes from gambling and food sales. Australia exports a lot more than when I was younger, I would not be surprised if that's put some upward pressure on at least beef. The quality certainly went down at Coles/Woolworths.
Insurance is such a huge contributor. Those farmers paying higher and higher insurance every year, their distributors, etc, and selling to you for the same cost. Lamb prices go up and finally they have a bit of breathing space? Of course they’ll keep them there. Fuck insurance companies.
I remember when 80c/L of petrol was expensive and I’m only 33 lmao
No because EVERY single manufacturer has realized they can charge more and get away with it. This is not just a Woolworths/Coles problem. They might get reigned in but who's going to stop Unilever or Nestle?
I wonder how much time we will waste we as a country blaming Cole’s and Woolies when the real problem is blatant
People don’t understand the real culprit is insurance company: every business on the supply chain needs insurance as a legal requirement. Therefore, 2% insurance increases cascades like compound interest Eg - one business: $100 * 2% = $102 - five in a chain: $100 * (1 + 2%)^5 = $110.4 The result is 10% increase of retail pricing when there is 2% at each level
I think you hit the nail on the head here - Insurance premiums have largely shot up because of shortage in materials and labour which has been driven by excess demand for construction; natural disasters, COVID, too much infrastructure building relative to the economy, QLD hosting Olympics & wasteful stimulus (looking at the homebuilder scheme here - entire suburbs using this for home renovations to push up the price of houses). What would also help would be reserving gas for the East coast and cutting the GST from electricity. That would cut energy costs by 9% immediately across every step in the supply chain from farm, to processing, to distribution/storage to retail...
You are on the money with insurance premiums. Something to note: previously I used an insurance broker as at various stages I had multiple policies across multiple vehicles, businesses and properties and they always got me good deals with whoever but in the past 2 years every quote they were getting me was absolutely ridiculous and jumps of 30-40-50% were being presented, they only really used the big east coast insurers. Ended up insuring everything with RAC WA as the prices were easily a third of what their competitors were offering and on par with what I was paying previously. RACQ or RACV were much more expensive I'm assuming it's because WA does not get the natural disasters over east gets with the flooding, fires and cyclones etc and RAC only insure people in WA. If you are in WA see what RAC can do for you. If you are over east sorry I can't help you.
But if there's only one or two companies in a supply chain, they only pay 2-4% but still charge the consumer 10-15%. The issue isn't that there's increasing costs at each level, it's capitalism as a whole, which says "make as much money as you can, because fuck everyone who's NOT you".
agriculture supply > farmer > food processing > distributor > supermarket I agree that greed is the main factor, but no one going after insurance is just insane (innocent ignorance)
The real real culprit is investors, which force businesses to make not profit, but growth, an exponentially moving goalpost. Every insurance company has investors. So do Coles and Woolies, and distributors, and more. If companies only sought to make a profit, prices would probably be far more reasonable. But due to the need to pay investors or risk them pulling out, profit just isn’t good enough.
> when the real problem is blatant You mean capitalism? Yeah.
People blame Colesworth because that's who they interact with day to day not knowing other companies make significantly more money in nominal terms, real terms and at the margins. Commbank margins are ~10% and mining company margins are over 20% yet people are crying that Colesworth have 4% margins because Walmart and UK supermarkets have 2% margins, makes no sense lol. Aldi has ~10% margins (can't get exact numbers since they're not public, estimate based on how much tax they pay) and most of that money is going back to Germany.
And it's not just manufacturers and it's not just big business. It's literally fucking everyone. We got a building quote from a local builder. We didn't go ahead with the work until a year later, so he had to re-quote. His quote doubled. Why? Because he said materials had gone up 20%. It wasn't a "fuck off" price or a punishment for not going ahead with the work, everyone else quoted a similar price. Every cunt who can is not just raising their price, they're using inflation as a scapegoat to increase their margins, therefore causing more inflation. Every cunt who can't raise their price (i.e. non essential business) is going out of business because they can't keep up.
And when you can’t set your price and are price takers, you are fucked. The farmers take the brunt of inflation here through costs to produce food and fibre.
Welcome to capitalism-enabled Narcissism. It's literally rewarded in our current culture which is why it's becoming the norm, when in fact it's incredibly unhealthy for both sides despite the perceived benefit to one side. Little do they all realize how this ends. What benefits everyone benefits you, too - they can't see that. The reverse becomes a big problem. You play zero-sum games with the world, and eventually things give out. Consistent growth is unsustainable, and it doesn't take a genius to see where these roads lead.
> it doesn't take a genius to see where these roads lead. It really doesn't. But it does take pulling our head out of our collective arse, which has been buried so deep by status quo maintenance ideology we can taste stomach acid.
I thought it was because manufacturers were having to pay upwards of 25% more for raw materials when the world was opening back up after covid and supply worked to catch back up with demand. But I am not really on top of.all the nuances that impacts inflation
What other proof one needs that having a poorly regulated market doesn’t help? What good does an inquiry do? In 2020 ACCC started investigating why Kaufland had to abandon Australian market. What was the result of that? Bigger profits for the duopoly and increase in cost of living for everyone. How about actually doing something: review the legislations and update it. What’s up with those colesworth that have every week more than half of the stock marked with various fake deals when actually everything is more and more expensive? Look at how others dealt with fake promotions and surcharges, for instance: >Misleading price reduction claims > >Price reduction claims such as “was € 50, now € 25” can be misleading if the initial selling price (known as “anchor price”) has been inflated. In all EU countries traders are obliged, when offering a discount, to indicate the lowest price applied to the item at least 30 days before the announcement of the price reduction. This information allows you as a consumer to assess whether the discount is genuine or not. > Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-pricing/index_en.htm >Card surcharges are not allowed > >You're not allowed to charge your customers extra for using a credit or debit card. This applies to all card purchases (in shops and online) made throughout the EU. > Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-funding/making-receiving-payments/electronic-cash-payments/index_en.htm
Lets say the government goes to take action against colesworth, because we live in a democracy the government has to prove their action is justified, legal and in proportion. If they can't prove that, then the courts will overrule and reject the governments action. The inquiry is the way the government gets its proof. That court action can take years, if at the end you get rejected then you'll have wasted years for no result. This is the main reason why divestment/breakup powers were ruled out as ineffective. Colesworth would fight it as long as they could in the court system, the breakup itself would be very complex, would be a decade before the breakup is completed. But we have cost of living pressure now, any action taken has to have a faster response time. So the appropriate approach is inquiry -> public shaming -> government regulation action including fines or monitoring. We got to this place by the undermining of the ACCC with budget cuts and appointment of a more commercial friendly leader by the LNP even then it took years, getting back to a good place again could take a while.
We're not America. We can break up businesses, regulate them, demand they only mark up by X percent and they can't do anything about it.
> What good does an inquiry do? In 2020 ACCC started investigating why Kaufland had to abandon Australian market. What was the result of that? Bigger profits for the duopoly and increase in cost of living for everyone. Kaufland never existed in Australia, so how do you figure them cancelling their plans to enter the market caused profits to increase? Well, it didn't. Coles profit each year since 2020 has been 2.6%, 2.6%, 2.7%, 2.7%. > What’s up with those colesworth that have every week more than half of the stock marked with various fake deals Such as? Every time this topic comes up you're in the comments complaining about fake deals, but you never have a single example of it happening. **What are these fake deals?** > Look at how others dealt with fake promotions and surcharges, for instance: We have laws against fake promotions and surcharges as well. I'm pretty sure I've told you this before, but I guess you don't have such a good memory. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/pricing/price-displays
“Member Price” is a very easy way to hide fake deals
Just because member prices are a shitty practice doesn't mean they are fake deals. What's fake about them? They're also not hiding anything, so I don't really know what you're trying to say.
I am surprised people keep paying for fast food at the current prices. Poor quality, shrunk, garbage... If people actually voted with their wallets it would turn around.
Because the decision isn’t to eat fast food, it’s “I don’t want cook” and nobody can afford takeaway restaurants any more. $60 for some Thai or $25 for a bucket of chicken.
Seriously, the old Indian or Chinese takeaway is a $100+ enterprise now. Used to be a regular treat, now we just don't ever.
Last time we got takeaway Chinese it was $60 for sweet/sour chicken, beef & black bean, and fried rice.
Missus got pizza the other night. $60 for 2 and garlic bread
Ouch. I’ve always found the prices of pizza to be ludicrous and it’s never as good as homemade.
I think my local Indian is now at something obscene like $9 for cheese naan. And no joke, they now have chandeliers.
>and nobody can afford takeaway restaurants any more. A lot of people clearly can. Outside of reddit, not everyone is living hand to mouth.
Yeah I'm sure the restaurants in Hervey Bay are still doing a decent trade.
Not everyone, no. But it is at least [13%](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-15/exclusive-disturbing-number-of-australians-living-in-substandard/102484354) of us, which is a huge number.
Retirees who paid off their $100k homes 20-30 years ago which has appreciated to $1.5 million?
100k? lol more like 30-60k. 10 years ago I was living in a shoebox unit along side 5 others paying around $220 a week. Out of curiosity I looked up the public sales register and the person who owned it paid 60k for the whole lot. My partner lived there 3 years before I moved in, and we moved out 2 years later. When we did we got a full transaction history from the real estate and over the 5 years we paid a bit over 55k. Absolutely disgusting.
How does the price of their house help put food on the table?
Because they don't have to pay a mortgage. And they can downsize to a unit/flat and have tonnes of money.
1. Buy house 2. Live in it 3. ??? 4. $$$
House PPOR is exempt on from asset test. Most of the boomer retirees I know live in a paid off 1.5m family home or luxury apartment, 500k in super and are getting a part-pension (mainly for the concession discounts and fortnightly energy supplement). The 500k is earning them $20k a year in tax free dividend/interest payments.
Ok but if their PPOR is paid off, does it matter if it worth 1m, 10m or 350k?
Yes, among others
Remember when everyone was recommending pub meals instead of takeaway? Now it's $36 Parmas and a plastic takeaway container of curry for $28. Yeah nah.
Aside from a Friday kebab from our local ($13-14 each) and some chocolate to celebrate surviving another week of this banal existence, we don't get take-out anymore, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Everything costs far too much and the quality is either lacking or wildly inconsistent. All the fees tacked onto the order can add anywhere from $2-3 to $7-8 dollars to it too. Fuck that.
We went to our local for the first time in over a year. I didn't even look at the prices, just ordered a burger and two minimum chips. My jaw nearly hit the floor when the cashier said, "That's $29..." $8 for minimum chips. The pizza oven just went to the top of the project list. It will pay for itself in a year or two.
> All the fees tacked onto the order can add anywhere from $2-3 to $7-8 dollars to it too. Can't forget that online prices are already inflated, we don't do it at all but it's always fun to see what an order will be between the two, $30 in person, or 58$ online with higher prices + fees, it's absurd.
Fast Food / Takeaway has absolutely shifted from a Convinience to a Luxury. We're priced out now, for one person it can be justified, two is bloody expensive tenable and we're a family of five. It's basically Hot Chips or Pizza for Takeaways if we want them fed.
It’s sometimes feels cheaper to get fast food and not have to buy all the expensive groceries and spend time cooking it too
$6 for fries, burger, and a drink. Sounds like a steal for me
Is a happy meal even that cheap anymore?
That’s a Hungry jacks app deal
2.75 for a hash brown, yep, sounds cheap. 6 dollars for a muffin, egg and slice of bacon, yep, sounds cheap. 🙄
Some places are charging 1.50 to 2 dollars for 1 dim sim! The rip offs on the cheapest and what was the most affordable food is the most extreme. Its staggering how a chicken shops 5.5 of large chips you almost cant eat there's just so much, yet you wonder what happened to the disappearing chips in the KFC/McDonalds/Red Rooster large chips rip off with half full boxes. Before you could find most of the lost Chips at the bottom of the McDonalds bag, now they don't even oblige you with this rip off compensation. The greed and rip offs are really out of control. Its like Australia has evolved into dog eat dog vulture culture.
Look after your health and nutrition.
Not with thai. All of their niche ingredients can be frozen.
And authentic Thai curry pastes and seasonings are cheap at the Asian grocer. I never buy Thai takeaway any more.
Thai is one of the best effort to reward ratios too IMHO. Compared to say Indian it's MUCH lower effort to cook most Thai meals and yet they still taste amazing.
I mean some people clearly are. I for one have distinctly less fast food than I did 5-10 years back
Is that economics or because you went from being 20 years old to 30 years old?
It's the value proposition that's probably comes from both. A $9 quick/dirty/easy meal then was more appealing than an $18 one now, even though I earn more money nowadays.
So I rarely ever buy takeaway or fast food these days, last night my partner went out for a movie with a friend, I put our daughter to bed and was pretty exhausted from the day, figured I might treat myself to some fish and chips and a few potato cakes and calamari rings since I haven’t had that in a couple of years. Jumped online to order, small chips 8.50, piece of flake 14.50, potato cakes 6.50 each, calamari 5 each. This was all for 1 person, not even for a whole family. I ended up just having cheese on toast and went to bed. The most basic simple Aussie takeaway that every level of our society used to be able to enjoy has slipped out of reach for a lot of people. I don’t know about anyone else but that’s pretty fucking sad in my book.
When folks tell me they did a maccas run I say why it's shit and expensive, it's not the same as 15 years ago or older. It's like they are stuck in the habit and feels like divorce to not go there. I can't get through to them, they reply with oh but I got a chips and big Mac for $x on the app. The savings feel outweighs the sensible. They're generally overweight so I guess too the sugar monsters need to be fed in their brain or they get mad. I said delete the app then (worked for me).
Yep and when was the last time you got fries from them that were actually crispy. KFC is just as bad, both never cook them properly now. Shrinking portions, sloppily trained staff, higher percentage of lazy staff. Being underpaid and young, I don’t blame them for not giving a shit. Anyone over 50 that worked in fast food in their past probably did it in the 80’s and we didn’t know shit. The money was fine as cost of living was fine. We blew most of it on southern comfort and lemon ruskis or car stereos anyway. Nowadays the kids know that their hourly rates are fucked, the owner is a greedy, often sleazy shit, the cost of living is fucked and they’re pissed that they have to work until midnight at Hungry Jacks because of these stupid always open trading hours we have now. If you’re a supermarket close at 6. If you’re a fast food place close at 8. Open late sunday. Hell, even close one day a week. Give your staff time off. Turn off the lights when you’re shut, your bills will go down. I dunno, maybe i’m living in the past. Meanwhile though support from young people for the 2 major parties is the lowest it’s ever been because of reasons like this. They’re Gen X and boomer filled parties that seem to not give one iota of a shit for Gen Y and younger people. Labor are in a position to actually make change that fixes things and win young voters but seem unwilling to. The Libs and Nationals won’t as they care about those groups even less. At least we’re no UK or USA, the political systems in those countries are FUCKKKKKKKED, but we seem to have very few progressive thinkers and we’re heading down a road I do not like.
I agree with the rich gotta be rich, that's for sure. Almost like big corp cuts the tiny corner, see what happens, saved some money, oh look still good business, do it again. Over time, that adds up. But to the big fan, they keep going. Like when someone says "do you like my haircut" when you see them every week, you hardly notice they get it done weekly. There are great businesses, family owned/run, who may charge more but make a far better meal, and better for you. And we're not supposed to eat out every day; it's meant to be a treat. We eat out so often, big corp keep opening stores. There's great articles on KFC growth overseas - it's insane. Where does all that chicken come from so quickly? You don't want to know! And the people serving you, cooking it, handling it - they don't want that job, it's a this will do, or worse, they can't get a better one - imagine how it's all handled. No thanks! No pride in those places. I spend my money where reputation matters, on occassion, and simply don't return if it turns bad (like an owner change). Subway was that for me, great stores, proud staff, then it went to shit and costs were cut and now owners who've been suckered in to buy a shop (aka, new Australians) come in, work hard but are under the rules of head office and the quality is lame yet the price is high. We all have to go back to making more of a self effort, like visit the butcher, buy great food, prep, reheat at work, feel full, don't even consider a maccas or KFC or even Grill'd now is getting cheaper with the ingredients. My rant is cause I am an older dude but I've experienced when people were proud to work in fast food because their boss was and so was head office - not now, it's money first, quality later and as long as customers flood in, why change? Then when the make a loss, close that store, that's Ok loads of money elsewhere and people who need that job are now out. Bad as Bonza - great people working, amazing in fact, but big corp in the USA says nah fck yez all we can't even pay for the football team we bought, nor the planes we lease off ourselves, so to hell with the businesses and tourism regional towns built business off us flying in and out, or those in rural areas to see family in cities. I hate when corporate takeovers are approved - reminds me of the general store on the corner shoved out by supermarkets, now we get a servo on every corner instead. I could go on!
Every time I craved it in the last decade, I instantly regretted buying it as it isn't what I remembered. However, it was walking in just before the pandemic and seeing no staff and a giant iPad to order off that actually made me walk out and never return again.
Nope. For prices to drop a period of “deflation“ is needed. What normally happens is that “inflation” drops or slows down. Meaning prices that were going up by say 8% a year, are now going up by 2% a year. (Almost) all price increases will remain, but their increases will slow down, but not get cheaper.
Exactly this, reduced inflation just means prices increase at a slower rate. Deflation is very rare and economic policy makers try to avoid it like the plague because it has the potential to crash the entire economy via a [deflationary spiral](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1888/economics/deflationary-spiral/). People see prices going down, they avoid spending thinking prices will go down more, which they then do. Reduced prices eventually mean less money available for wages, people lose their jobs. Repeat until the entire economy is in flames. The only long-term solution to high cost of living is higher wages and a higher supply of goods and services.
The bubble has to pop. People will get hurt.
I’ve been having the same intense thought for the last 5 years, and minimally thinking that for the decade before. I now doubt it. The property developers are holding onto all the vacant land, on the outskirts of Sydney (and most likely all big cities), some that already has DA approval, and slowly release it to deliberately keep prices high. The current federal gov, the most progressive of the two political parties, is doing nothing about making more houses. Their 10m houses in the next decade promise is only 50k more than the last decade. They are not building more government houses to flood the market with cheap houses to change the market. They are doing nothing to make property developers to build more houses and flats. The federal gov mostly relies on mining/gas and housing to balance the federal budget. They can’t afford to let the housing market crash as it will totally ruin the Australian economy, with no other industry to fill the gap. Politically there is no will to fix the situation. With the defeat of Shorten/Labour a decade ago, fixing housing is now known to be an election losing policy. There LNP will make sure of that. Only one federal politician does not own property. All own one house, most own multiple. Couple this with Lobbyists and political donations to political parties being hidden, there is more influence in Canberra to not reduce property prices. The only hope is for the younger voters to out number the boomers. And this is going to take over a decade. Or for poverty in Australia to rise to the point that people start rioting (like the French over raised retirement age). But that will never happen as Aussies are too complacent. “No worries”, “she’ll be right”. I hope I’m wrong.
One of the hardest lessons I've learned over the 23 years of my adult life is that the bubble absolutely does not have to pop. I've heard that line my entire life, whether it's about food, houses, fuel etc and yet it's never happened. Even here in /r/australia, people have been saying that the housing bubble will pop any moment and that they're going to sweep in and grab something cheap for at least a decade. One thing I'm certain of is that house prices are never getting back to where they were a decade ago, let alone 15+ years.
The bubble did pop in the GFC, when housing prices dropped by 10-20% in the USA (only about 5-10% here). But as we all saw, even that was only a blip and soon it was all higher than ever.
No it doesn't. It's not even a bubble by international standards. And people getting hurt means nothing.
This isn't a bubble. Inflation isn't a bubble, it doesn't "pop" and go backwards like the stock market or house prices. If inflation were to drop through the floor the reserve bank would be doing everything possible to bring it back up. Deflation on paper might sound like a good thing but it really isn't.
If I understand correctly, the general idea is that in a well-functioning market inflation needs to slow down to a point that it is below wage growth, and wages grow to catch up. The problem is our current markets don’t reward wage growth, they reward wage suppression. Something is (or many things are) off. It’s unionisation, it’s the media suppressing actual thought in favour of gotcha moments and rage bait. It’s politicians responding to that in the media. Our system of regulated capitalism is still the best system, it’s generally the least susceptible to corruption, the one that makes like better for most. The problem is that it relies on public opinion, and public opinion is easy to manipulate.
Agreed. Capitalism was the best system for bringing people out of poverty, moving 3rd world economies to 2nd and 1st world. But something is wrong when Billionaires can flourish, are allowed to exist, when the middle class is on the decline- decreased home ownership, university too expensive… I don’t think must people realise how big a billion is when compared to a million. - A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 11,500 days. 31.5 years. - 2 weeks vs 31.5 years! - When this refers to money, how much bigger a billion is when compared to a million; someone owning a billion dollars is obscene. Literally obscene. - And there is soon going to be Trillionaires. 11,574,074 days. - If some was born when Christ was born and earned $1000 a day ($365,000 per annum), spent nothing, they still wouldn’t be a billionaire. Woolworths and Coles needing to exceed their billion $$ profits to prove they are successful. Banks making 10s of billions in profits. We have now passed the point where private companies and contractors are more cost efficient than government services. Government services cost way less than private. There has to be something after capitalism. Not socialism or communism, they are inherently too corrupt. I don’t know what is next.
I kept saying during covid it wouldn't go down. They'd just use more excuses to keep everything high cause we all need to eat (same goes for fuel) I'm lucky I have farmers markets and such near by. Others are not as lucky
What I find hilarious is that in the ACT the farmers (around Canberra in NSW) got the shits with Colesworth and rather than a weekend farmer market (which still happens) they pooled together and opened their own farm to store super market that is open 7 days a week. It has been going gangbusters. It is near the Costco so you have people coming and doing mass bulk shopping. It is crazy how cheap everything is as well. I could go to Coles or Woolies for a quarter cabbage for 9 bucks or I can spend 3 or so bucks for a full head of cabbage instead. They also have nearly everything Coles and Woolies have in terms of fresh produce, meats, seafoods, dairy, nuts, artisan goods and breads. Multiple businesses came together to bring it to life. The quality is there and you are supporting local businesses.
That's freaking awesome. I always try to support local and only go to the big pricks when necessary
Yeah, so in Canberra there are 4 farmer markets. A couple are now open 7 days a week. The only one working on Saturday only is the one in epic park with a rotating roster of famers coming in. The new store the same businesses (from the epic farmer market) signed up with the Harris farm markets which opened up near Costco. So the guys who would come down every 2 weeks with seafood or the specialist mushrooms or the honey shop that comes down once a month or the peeps who make vinegars and oils and such along with the artisan good makers of speciality cheeses, meats and such. All have their brands in that Canberra store. Some businesses that are in Canberra like 3 mills bakery and our local butcher have setup shop in the new store location as well. Same with the seafood Business that runs out of Batemans bay, now has a shop front in that store. Having online delivery for food as well has been awesome too. Those same businesses still come to epic to sell direct so I had a chance to talk to some of the people / owners and they are happy as can be. You can still buy their products direct for a bit cheaper but the mark up at Harris is sweet fa. The other farm markets the stalls have turned into permanent stores now. With some locations getting renovated to become their own giant permanent markets.
What are the names of those 7 day farmers markets?
That story makes me happy for about 8 seconds, then I realised Colesworth have probably pooled their lawyers together to find a technicality to shut them down. (or just give a lobbyist another 20g to pay off a pollie).
They’ll buy the premises out from under the co-op, then terminate the lease 👍
Would be interested to see how they would do that. I made another comment about the 4 farmer markets in Canberra. The one near Costco is a Harris farm markets where farmers and businesses from the epic park farmer market signed up to sell stock. The other 3 locations have turned into perm locations where the stalls have turned into stores. The ACT government is in charge in relation to where shops can open, especially when it comes to chain stores (as we have no council government it is all state level). So Woolies or Coles trying to buy the land will be blocked by the ACT government as they don't allow multiple Woolies or Coles in the same location. Where these markets are there is a Woolies or Coles not even 500m away.
Or they open up a ColesWorth nearby and go lower and put them out that way. I've noticed this in my nearby area. I highly doubt bananas can really differ in $2 like a few suburbs away, but the Coles 2 suburbs away from me charge bananas for like $2 a kg, and so does the local grocer. But my suburb? It's $4.5 with no competition around.
Are you talking about Harris Farm, that opened next to Costco last month?
We've all played monopoly, we know how this game ends
A lot of people are too wilfully dense to make the connection.
No-one is ever getting an email from their agent telling them that rent is going to be reduced because the RBA dropped a percentage.
Am I the only one that finds it weird that when people talk about cost of living they always seem to focus on groceries, I'm like that's nothing compared to rent and home prices . Get that back under control and we're golden.
It’s funny hey, especially considering how much money is spent lobbying to ensure that housing is unaffected by government policies
Does the cost of living (food) ever actually go down significantly? I thought we just had a long period of fairly flat prices which makes this steep rise of the past couple of years so much worse. Restaurant prices were also flat for a long time but instead of 2 per cent a year rises we just got a sudden 10-20% jump.
The numbers always go up, but it used to, relative to wages
I notice there are eating places that used to be bonkers busy, now they have spare seats. Ones that are amazing and with reputation still look ok, but if you're second rate I see many empty tables even no one dining. Definitely effecting many watching their budget but there's plenty too that they are still ok through life choices (eg, paid off their mortgage, did well with stocks, have a well paid career they've worked up to). Others too just don't give a shit and have no intention of say investing in retirement so stuff it spend up now. I for one have halved my eating out and meal prep properly which has countered the big spend. I don't think this is temporary and not the first time prices have risen. I absolutely think companies are taking the piss. I went to buy car wax yesterday, went up 40%. As if it costs that much more to make that stuff. It's been 2yrs. So I bought a cheaper one to keep my old car ok since new ones of those are still stupid in price. We're all smashed by it somehow and it's shit.
Prices have never come down after going up and sizes have never increased once shrunk.
Prices never go down, that how the economy works
"1/2 price" should actually read "Normal Price" as everything has doubled.
The article assumes the enquiries are something more than obfuscatory optics designed by government & big business to keep people from rioting Group A (govt/big business revolving door) - PwC treason - nobody to blame - Robodebt - nobody to blame - consumers and farmers being ripped off - nobody to blame - sovereign gas theft while our elderly go cold - nobody to blame - Qantas - numerous examples of politicians selling out our nation for personal gain - gee willickers! Group B (people who call truth to power) - Julian Assange - 14 years imprisoned - Friendly Jordies - firebombed and SLAPP lawsuited - David McBride - Bernard Collaery The first step is realising government is not working for us.
Don’t forget journalists being raided, and whistleblowers going to gaol. Weakened Whistleblower laws…
I get shouted down on here when I point out Australia’s is absolutely a corrupt country. Just because we’re not a banana republic (we’re close) doesn’t change anything
We are the 52nd US state, existent to have our resources pilfered, wallets plundered, and assets sold to the highest overseas bidder. Source: every single anti-civilian policy for the last 25 years.
FYI It is cheaper to buy Australian Beef per kg that has been shipped to Japan, get prepped and packaged in a superior way in a Japanese Supermarket. https://www.beefcentral.com/news/comparison-suggests-aussie-beef-retailed-in-japan-is-cheaper-than-in-australia/
ACCC is a paper tiger, they’re only in place for the government to say “look we’re not corrupt.” Even when they investigate someone the get a slap on the wrist, but good luck getting them to get off their asses and look into something.
ACCC has absolutely no relevance to government corruption.
Cost of living in Australia is insane. The place I was renting for $2400/month back in 2018 is now $4400. It was a garbage heap in Surry Hills. No renovations no nothing, besides fixing the roof that would have it raining in the living room every time there was a storm. But also lucky that the flooring was so bad that it would just seep through and not pool 😂 And then you spend $400/week on groceries. Hot? $400/month electricity bill. Cold? $400/month electricity bill. Fuel is $1.80/litre. Income tax rate is, what, 38%. Average house price is $1 million. Work in the city? $100/week for train rides that aren't tax deductible. A whopper and a cheeseburger with some fries and nuggets is $25. Make it make sense.
How the fuck are you spending $400 a month of power??!? I got no insulation in my house, a swampy AC and an old gas heater. Barely use either of them.
Next thing we know, they'll start using US medical pricing model in Australia and we will again be powerless against the tyrannical power. /s
Is there any evidence of cost of groceries going down? Canada had enquires to shrinkflation but what has to be done for us? Mass protests? I’d love to protest but I’m too busy working three jobs to try to pay for rent and groceries
Not for groceries, but for meats. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/monthly-consumer-price-index-indicator/may-2024 It's consistently been actually deflation for months. Granted this on the back of like 15% inflation last year, but that's some evidence that it's been dropping.
I don't shop at coles or woolies anymore, and I'm back to spending $50-$80 for a full week of groceries for 2 people Local markets/butchers/grocers is the way. STOP GIVING THESE THIEVING CUNTS YOUR MONEY
There's a lot of people saying there's not enough competition... But I think it's mostly that Australians as a whole are lazy and keep shopping at Coles/Woolworths. (Note this isn't as true in regional/rural areas) I do what you do, save plenty. But I for the life of me, can't convince anyone to shop at the aldi/grocers/butcher etc
My nearest town of 10,000 has a Coles, IGA, FoodWorks, Aldi, and two independent butchers. IGA and FoodWorks are easily 20-25% more expensive than Coles and Aldi on dry goods. The butchers are as expensive or more expensive as the most expensive supermarket meat available in town, although probably better quality. If you're really on a budget, Coles and Aldi are still the least expensive one stop shop. I don't think IGA or FoodWorks apply any downward pressure on prices here. It's a 50 minute round trip to a larger town, so many small towns may have the illusion of choice, but there's no real competition on prices.
>it's mostly that Australians as a whole are lazy and keep shopping at Coles/Woolworths. Bingo. I've been to shopping centres with green grocers in the same vicinity as shitworths and idiots are buying produce in the gouging shop rather than walking 2 minutes to buy cheap produce in the green grocer. Utter brain dead people everywhere.
The green grocer, butcher and chicken shop opposite Coles here closes at 5pm. I'm busy relaxing on the weekends. Please explain how I am brain dead.
Literally this I make a similar comment on every colesworth hate post, and still everyone complains that it's too hard to drive an extra 15 minutes to get to a local store. They are the problem and refuse to believe it. If everyone thought like this, local stores would have the funds to better themselves, and the big 2 would be going broke before they could drop prices to keep up. A little community effort goes a long way Definitely harder in rural areas, I will never argue that
Prices aren't going to go down unless there's suddenly more competition in the market, and that's not something that will happen any time soon. Best most people can hope for is a pay rise beyond inflation
Except for residential land, over the last 80 years, the cost of living, relative to wages, has gone down dramatically. Clothing, cars, and electronics are all much cheaper. This is likely to continue. If we address the poor public policy, like negative gearing, that has allowed housing to become expensive, things will be golden.
Yup - the key to all this really, is housing policy. Remember that cheap generic products in the supermarket are only a new thing relatively. With cheaper housing, comes less pressure on budgets so consumers can actually afford to shop elsewhere.
Cost of living go down? Hahahahahaha.
Oh no we've tried nothing and nothing works! The system continues to grind successfully on.
Does anyone else hear about the investigations and imagine a little Team America UN puppet walking around the Woolies accounting department? "Stop sabotaging the economic repair, or else." "Or else what?" "Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are."
I’m pretty sure it’s really huge increases in insurance prices that are screwing us. Those costs are getting passed on throughout the economy.
One thing that Covid taught big corporations is that they can keep increasing their margins on essential items and people have no choice but to buy them and they can get away with it.
Grocery prices don’t go down with economic relief. I don’t remember a time in my life they ever have. Supermarket chains exist to benefit their shareholders, no more no less. They aren’t a community service. Say you pay $5 now for 2L of Milk. And milk wholesales to Coles at say 0.80c per litre. If things changed and milk went down to 0.50c per litre, the milk is still going to be $5, and the farmers will be even more screwed than what the supermarkets already do to them. Because this then pays greater dividends to the shareholders. Capitalism at its finest. Now they know we CAN pay this, they have absolutely no reason to drop prices. Without government regulation, which won’t happen as big business is in bed with both Labor and liberals, we will be driven to poverty and only the wealthy will be able to afford food. The media keeps spruiking this upcoming cost of living relief, because it keeps people checking the news every day for updates. But this promise of relief around the corner is fabricated to keep you hooked on checking for the latest details.
Everything's going to continue getting worse until their is a (most likely violent) revolution by the people. To think the government would change any of this while they're the ones going out of their way to make sure it can happen and line their pockets the whole time doesn't make sense. Doesn't matter which party is in charge when none of them are willing to do anything about the most pressing matters affecting people today.
Just FYI It's not the supermarkets It's the energy companies, banks oh and hugeeee immigration that is fucking the system. Running at an overall 6% profit is pretty average. Gov just wanted a scapegoat.
Nup We are being skinned alive now Because they are getting away with massive margins, there isn't any reason for companies to stop gouging. So profit driven inflation will keep the RBA squeezing people with mortgages. It's a bit fucking awful.
In Aldi this week, I saw a "New" Product advertised for $1.15 Never mind that it's exactly the same product, in the exact same spot on the shelf as it has been since that Aldi opened. And also nevermind that the previous week, prior to the "New" tag appearing on the digital display label, it was priced at $1.10 And that 6 Months before that, it was $1.05. And that before then, it had been at $0.95 since we've been buying the item (5+ years). No, it's now "new" and has a higher price to match. Please Explain Aldi! PS - bonus points if you can guess what the item is. Hint, it's non-perishable and comes in a 1.25L bottle.
Corporate greed (numbers go up) says No.
The only way the cost of living will go down is if people go back to making their own food, but our nation is not structured to support that option.
Anything made in Australia is going up in price rapidly, our inflation problem is domestic: Food, housing, finance/insurance etc.
In my area Woolworths are all over the place with their pricing. On a daily basis.
You mean to tell me the inquiry did nothing? :pikachushockedface: (Wouldn't let me put an image in)
If you start earning 200% more for a product, where is the incentive to reduce the price? It's never going backwards.
Just a reminder that on the 24th June, Parliament voted against the following: "calls on the Government to stop offering bandaid answers to the big crises facing people, and implement all the recommendations of the Greens-led Senate inquiry into supermarket prices, including making price gouging illegal, and supporting the Australian Greens’ Competition and Consumer Amendment (Divestiture Powers) Bill to introduce powers to break up the supermarket duopoly, which would lower the cost of food and groceries." The recommendations: * The establishment of a Prices and Competition Commission to examine and monitor prices and price setting across the economy and require supermarkets to publish historical pricing data. * Price gouging illegal * Divestiture laws to create power break ups in the duopoly of Australian supermarkets * That the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct be made mandatory with significant penalties for breaches, and be expanded to greenlife industries and any retailer that stocks food and grocery products * That the ACCC be given powers to investigate land banking and unfair trading practices. * Supermarkets be made to adopt mandatory standards for unit pricing, and notify customers of changes in sizes or prices of products, to help prevent shrinkflation * For the Government to standardise discount and promotional terms, to prevent supermarkets promoting fake discounts. * For the Government to back stronger health and safety standards for supermarket employees * Further investigation of the role of multinational food manufacturers in price increases in Australia * That the National Food Waste Strategy is updated to require supermarkets to publish data on food waste and consider whether unrealistic cosmetic standards are adding to waste. Only 7 members voted in favour.
It's called late stage capitalism and collapse. Here to stay.
We might end up with no chicken if bird flu gets out of control
The price will be what people will pay. Without significant competition this will always be tuned for the highest profits.
> The price will be what people will **be forced to** pay. Without significant competition this will always be tuned for the highest profits. Fixed that for you. You are right, without competition that’s what happens.
Nope. All we can hope for is wages increasing at a better rate
Short answer: No. Long answer: Fuck No, no no no, noooooooooooo.
Yeah, it will but you won't like what has to happen for it to go down.
In my area Woolworths are all over the place with their pricing. On a daily basis.
>Will the cost of living ever go down? No, thus inflation. For deflation to occur the economy would have to truly shit itself.
the cost of living isn't ever going to significantly decrease. short term price spikes aside, people need to understand that inflation defines the new normal.
The cost of living will go down if unemployment increases significantly and house prices drop a great deal. No fucker wants that.
The cost of food will go down when they introduce Soylent Green. Also comes in Red.