Stupidity Hurts

In yesterday's edition of the HK Standard, there is a story on a concern group accusing the supermarket for charging high prices....

"Supermarket chains are charging up to 29 percent more than neighborhood grocery stores, a survey has found.

Supermarket Watch Group, which carried out the survey, warned that this could lead to further inflation and urged the government to speed up legislation on a competition law to avoid monopolies and unfair price setting. "We hope housewives can become smart consumers, but as smart as they could possibly be, they won't beat monopolized sale [techniques]," said legislator Wong Kwok-hing of the Federation of Trade Unions...

The group, which was set up in 2006 and includes district councillors, last month compared prices between two supermarkets and two grocery stores in Tung Chung and Tsuen Wan.
It found that food in the supermarket in Tsuen Wan was 26 percent higher than for the same items sold at the local grocer's. The Tung Chung supermarket was 18 percent more expensive."

I am not sure what is the problem here? If the supermarket charges higher prices for items compared with those at grocery stores, the thing to do, then, is simply not buy stuff from the supermarkets but not asking for an antitrust law.

And what about things other than food, I bet if they have the resources to conduct research on those items as well, their conclusion will probably be: if the prices at Supermarkets are higher than grocery stores, then there's evidence on monopoly; if prices at Supermarkets are lower than grocery stores, then there's also evidence on monopoly as supermarkets are trying to acquire monopoly status through predatory pricing!!

BTW, Mr Wong, now you are at it, we all know that wages for manual labor are far lower in the mainland than in HK. Why don't you push the government to allow more mainland workers into HK so as to level the playing field for our mainland brothers as well you hyprocite!