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!

FDI and Judiciary Independence

Wu Bangguo, head of National People's Congress (China's legislature) made a few remarks on the relationship between the central government and HK Special Administrative Region the other day. See this story here.

Former Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan warned that if the central goverment and the HK government are not going to come out to clarify whether Wu's remarks imply that Beijing is having a rethink on HK's judiciary independence, this might have adversely affect investors' confidence HK. Read more here.

If I understand Anson's logic correctly, she is trying to argue that investors would likely leave HK or at least not increase their investments here if we don't have judiciary independence any more.

Really?

If that were true, you would expect say democratic India to have far more FDI than say our motherland China then. The reality is that, China, a place where judiciary independence is at best a work in progress, is a FDI magnet and China's FDI flows dwarf those of India's. See the relevant charts here.