I read this article today in the Sydney Morning Herald. I don’t normally respond to newspaper articles, but this one really pissed me off.

How is this not price fixing? And how come these stories never get to the underlying reason why retail prices here are so high? It’s at least partly because we have some of the highest retail rents in the world, sustained by a retail property oligopoly.

Lowering the GST application value below $1,000 would cost significantly more to police than it would generate in revenue, so the outcome would simply be that consumers pay more TWICE - once for the new tax and then again for the extra compliance costs.

I simply do not understand why consumers should be forced to carry the can for outdated business models locked up by retail property moguls.

Update 20120517: Apparently, it’s not just me getting irritated by price-fixing retailers, there are now calls for the ACCC to take a look as well.