This week yet another family in the same supermarket queue as me had to put some good back cos their card didn’t work.
I think the cost of living is growing as an issue that people care about. The Herald on Sunday has an interesting article this week.
We checked with hundreds of retailers around the country to measure the average price of 70 basic household items from the Consumer Price and Food Price indices. We found that their average cost has risen more than 5 per cent over the past 12 months. Items like beer, cigarettes, petrol and diesel have gone up 10 per cent or more just in the first months of this year; the prices of some fresh produce, like potatoes, carrots and butter, have risen as much as 50 per cent in the past 12 months.
This won’t surprise economists in their glass and concrete tower blocks on The Terrace in Wellington. The Treasury has predicted the Consumer Price Index (CPI) will rise 4.5 per cent in the year to March, and 5 per cent in the year to June.
and
Forecast inflation of more than 5 per cent means prices at the dairy, supermarket and petrol pump, and the cost of building a new house, will rise so steeply that wages won’t be able to keep pace.
Paul Keane, of retail consultants RCG in Parnell, says that in the 1980s people had secure jobs and their wages were rising. Today the economy is stagnant and inflation is increasingly rampant.
“In the eighties we all had jobs and salaries were good. It’s the reverse of today,” he said. “Mortgage rates were high but money was easily available, hence inflation for the average consumer was not too much of a problem.
You had drinks and barbecues at your home. You lived with it.
and
Eaqub says that while some goods may have become cheaper in the recent recession, as manufacturers compete for business, food has not.
“It might be cheaper to buy an LCD TV,” he says.”But it’s more expensive to buy milk. And this hits home because we can’t do without food.
“People have to keep buying food. But other retailers of what we call frivolous goods – a lipstick, for example – will feel the pinch.
“If people have to spend more on food, they will cut back on things they perceive to be less necessary items. I believe we’re going back into recession.”
In previous recessions people simply borrowed more money. But this time, he says, people are cutting back and spending less. That strangles the retailers. It is a vicious circle.
Suffer the peasants!
!
Petrol where i live is now $2.10 a litre and a town north of where i live i have been told is $2.24 a litre.
when did that happen?
please remove the gst component on petrol
The rise in food prices is international and those in poorer countries are driven to protest as we can see in the Middle East. I expect a factor is the huge differences between the rich and poor as will be the driver here in NZ.
it alway used to be said that in a recession the sales of items like lipstick would rise – or at least not fall – as women who could not afford a new dress made do with new cosmetics. But the insanity of prices today means you can buy a dress for about the same price as a lipstick in NZ.
I presume this is because the lipstick has a longer shelf-life.
No GST On Food >> The Tax Justice Petition
The tax justice petition is to be introduced to parliament later this year, the aim is to make tax justice and the high cost of food an election issue.
http://www.nogstonfood.org/category/tax-justice-petition/
The petition calls for the removal of all GST off food and to replace the tax deficit hole this will leave, with a financial transaction tax on financial speculation which is currently tax free.
Volunteers are being sought to help gather names for the petition at the Pacifika Festival this weekend
Trevor a few questions here
1. What on earth are you doing in a supermarket?
2. Why weren’t the family who couldn’t afford groceries shopping at your supermarket and not at the budget one? (I’m assume that as a high incomed NZer you weren’t at Pack n Slave)
3. Can you give an approximate list of items that were returned (as non-essentials) and that stayed in their trolley?
CK
Prickly One – Q 1 + 2 – I just about always shop at local Wainuiomata supermarket, know where stuff is and also good way of people having informal chat with me.
Q3 – Didn’t look carefully but included big bag of spuds and large (12?) packet of toilet paper returned. Milk, meat (pork special), baked beans and budget bread amongst stuff not returned.
“Petrol where i live is now $2.10 a litre and a town north of where i live i have been told is $2.24 a litre.”
Petrol is currently NZ$3.68/litre in the Uk, with median household income in US$ 40k NZ and 39k for the UK, from OECD PPP tables.
So not so bad here after all.
I’m assume that as a high incomed NZer you weren’t at Pack n Slave
Why? I’m a regular at Pak n Save – just because you have money doesn’t mean you should waste it.
Nice to see someone from an ivory tower far away concerned with the welfare of Wainuiomatians and their spending habits.
Perhaps coming back to open a budget advisory service for people who make poor choices?
Pac n Save offers savings, there’s lots of ways to get “rich” one is not to throw your money away on overpriced goods subsidising aisle arrangements and decor.
Who r u talking about Robbo?
i’m gratified that at least some of our so called “fourth column” are actually writing, and highlighting what is a bad, and worsening problem that is facing middle, and lower income groups here. we need to have more responsible journalists doing this. that is what they are supposed to be there for in the first place isn’t it?
a telling sign is when (apparently) credible right wing commentators are reduced to asking pointless and mislesding, personal questions of the people bringing this to our attention, and the usual apologists being reduced to weak attempts to start personal slanging matches to cover for the lack of counter argument.
it seems,even for the most hidebound nat cheerleader, it is getting nigh on impossible to continue to deny reality. why does that give me deep feelings of foreboding? is it because we may have only just started to slide downhill at a noticeable rate? if so, where will it end? food riots on queen st? supermarkets being targeted by organised crime? (don’t go near the man in the bmw children, he sells vegetables)
@ trevor: u serious? the one needlessly needling you
@ gn: don’t be misleading. The PPP figures you quote are 2008/9 data for NZL and 2004 data for UK.
@ bbfloyd: well said