Here is one in the "please explain" pile. A fellow farmer took some down time and went to Japan; why I do not know. He noticed that Aussie beef is cheaper in Japan than it is here on the supermarket shelves in Australia. A rump steak is about $28 a kilo in Japan and $29.80 in Australia. That is if one can afford to eat this in the first place.
The price difference according to the supermarkets in Australia is due to retail discount retails and export competition. But the more likely explanation is that the supermarkets are engaging in price gouging, in other words, using the cover of inflation, to rip us off. I can tell you firsthand that it is not the man on the land getting this money, it goes to the hot hands of the big supermarkets. And the same thing with gas, where Australia is a gas exporter, but the "logic" of globalism means we pay the same, or more, for gas than those countries that get our gas. Go figure!
"Australian beef is cheaper on Japanese shelves than in our own major supermarkets, a farmer has found.
Andrew Dunlop took time off from working at his farm in New South Wales to visit Japan, where he made the discovery at a discount retailer.
Australian beef cubes retail for $18.35 per kilogram in Tokyo, according to the Australian Beef Association, while a similar product sells for about $20 per kilogram at home.
Thinly sliced beef stir fry is $19.80 in Japan and between $20 to $25 in Australia. A rump steak is about $28 in Japan and $29.80 in Australia.
Dunlop questioned how the meat was cheaper overseas despite the costs of international shipping and tariffs.
"These prices ask more questions of me than they answer," he said. …
Discount retails and greater export competition may play a part in the cheaper prices overseas but the beef industry said the domestic supermarket prices aren't clear.
"As a consequence of that neither the producer or the consumer is getting a good deal," Dunlop added.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is looking into claims of price gouging by the major supermarkets and will report later in the year on price-setting practices.
The supermarkets have rejected those claims and blamed food inflation instead."