Counterfeit medications are a significant income source for organised crime. A regulated industry provides protection from counterfeiting and comes at a price, but would you rather get a discount and take your chances?

I self medicate for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, and have done so for over ten years. The same medication (off label use in Australia) would cost me well over $10,000 a year. I paid $900 for a few hundred years supply (chemically stable and the smallest quantity I could purchase). I have medical oversight for the use of the drug. Is this what people mean when they want cheaper drugs? Not that I have observed. What people want is for someone else to go to all the hard work and expense in procuring a safe and effective drug, then provide it to them at low cost, preferably free, and then they will still whinge about one inconvenience or another.

If you are always on the take then you are in danger of not giving much thought about the processes and costs by which your handouts are provided.

"mhaze you have the opportunity to admit here that those with the power control prices and do have a huge say on what we pay in a range of areas, but you choose not to - why?"

Why? Because that is wrong.

Supermarkets, pharmacies , retailers in general don't have the power to control prices. Only those utterly ignorant of economics think so. They are just as much at the mercy of government policy, international forces, the vicissitudes of supply and demand as every one else.

The current inflation cycle was instituted by the errors of the Covid lockdowns and the economic vandalism that accompanied that. People who applauded the lockdown policies did so in utter ignorance or utter lack of care as to the results of those policies.

But when the results became apparent, when the chooks came home to roost, rather than accept the real causes, they look around for others to blame. I get that you and millions like you want to blame the supermarkets, the pharmacists, the retailers because they are the ones you see putting up prices. But they aren't the causes of inflation - you are.

Paul1405,
Why do you challenge posters yet when a question is put to you we never get an answer other than some idiotic waffle ?
Sounds very much like you're a bureaudroid !

Mr Mhaze Trumpster,

Wrong again, can't you tell the difference between an assumption and a statement of possibly. To say "They could be paying 20% less this year than last." is not an assumption, its only one possibility. If I had said; "I assume they are paying 20% less this year than last", now that's an assumption. Example, I could say; "mhaze could have an above average IQ" that is an assumption, but I would be wrong!

How about providing evidence that supermarkets are paying more this year than last for electricity. You're in the know, so you claim, how about some proof to back up what you say, the fact is you don't know. Is all this some kind of Trumpenoics on your part?

Indy,

No need for you to worry about inflation, supermarket prices etc, with you snout firmly in the taxpayer trough getting a big handout of undeserved aged welfare, you're inflation proof!

Got a friend that works at Coles service stations.
Apparently a few days back they've done some training about new tobacco laws coming in.

Apparently rolling tobacco will only be available in pouches of 15 grams, so if you used to buy a 50 gram pouch, you will now have to buy 3 which will cost more, but you get less.
Same for cigarettes, they will only be available in packs of 20's so if you used to buy packets of 40's you'll now have to buy 2 packets at a higher cost.

They call it shrinkflation.

Stupid part about it is that more people will just switch to cheap illegal tobacco, and the government will take less in sales tax.

Though I'm sure it will be good for their statistics, they can probably claim smoking rates are reducing and their policies are successful, when in truth smokers will just not be buying the normal legal tobacco products.

Goes to prove once again our nation is run by imbeciles.
They'd be making more in tobacco tax overall if they weren't so greedy.

Hi AC,

"SHRINKFLATION" is a common practice, your favourite sauce once in a 250g bottle, now in the "same" bottle but smaller at 200g at even a higher price. Where you once bought 4 bottles you now buy 5, up over 25%. The one caught out with that practice was Cadbury chocolates once 200g block now a 180g block. They were forced to change their claim "a glass and a half in every block", now they have to say "A glass and a half in every 200g". In the good old days their chochs were 1/2 pond blocks (427g).

Just on "No Frills" the old Franklins made the mistake of reducing the quality under their black and white labelling, "more sauce and less beans" as they would say. Aldi on the other hand have been able to keep the quality (copy the brand name) and reduce the price.

The biggest problem with Woolworths and Coles with their 75% of the market, they lack competitiveness. The big two control prices from both ends the "deal" they give the producer, and price fixing at the retail end. Remember the milk scandal where the supermarkets purposely kept milk at $1/lt sending producers broke. Not because they wanted to help consumers, but because they wanted to boost overall dairy sales, in Woolworths case dairy sales went up 15% on some very high margin dairy items, the milk was a bait to get customers into the dairy section.