Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.
That’s how markets work.
There’s value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that’s a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.
The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.
There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.
Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.
That’s how markets work.
There’s value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that’s a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.
The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.
If the market isn’t performing its function then that is when the government needs to step in and change the rules.
In this case our grocers aren’t competing on price enough, so they’d be adding more.
There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.