Believe It or Not, Supermarket ‘Price Gouging’ Is Not to Blame for Your High Grocery Bill

Commentary If you go down to your local Coles or Woollies, you’re likely to find goat on the menu. That is, goat spelled “scapegoat.” Australia, like the rest of the world, is experiencing elevated inflation, and some of the perpetrators of that inflation are looking for someone to blame. As grocery prices have been rising along with everything else, and as most people’s direct experience of inflation is through those prices, one potential explanation for inflation is that it is due to “price gouging” by the retailers of groceries. Blaming supermarkets for inflation is an old Labor habit, with the Rudd government in 2007 establishing a website called Grocery Choice meant to put downward pressure on supermarket prices....