Elon Musk, or as he is known on the internet, Space Karen, recently used his social media dumpster fire app, X, to ‘interview’ and give praise to the largely incoherent 45th US president.
The wide-ranging ramble of privilege and delusion wasn’t particularly noteworthy, other than both agreeing that the cost-of-living crisis was driven by government spending.
But is it? Depends who you ask. Nobel Prize-winning economists will undoubtedly have different opinions to those grifting billionaires.
Joseph Stiglitz is the former, and the ex-World Bank chief economist, and best-selling author, and was recently in the country.
He says corporate profits are partly responsible for inflation – profits made possible by a concentration of market power.
Stiglitz says effective competition policies can lower prices and combat inflation. That is like holy water to grifting vampire billionaires like Musk.
The Australia Institute think tank, who hosted Stiglitz’s visit, say, ‘Australia is experiencing a period of rising prices and sticky inflation, in part owing to excessive corporate profits following the Covid lockdowns, in an economy dominated by the big banks, the big supermarkets, the big mining companies and the big consulting firms’.
Competition is a cornerstone of capitalism?
Australia does indeed suffer from a lack of meaningful competition, which is supposed to be a cornerstone of capitalism.
Apart from the four big banks, the two large supermarkets and the highly concentrated energy sector, Australians are faced with a remarkable lack of choice.
Media ownership is a major concern of course, given concentration by corporate interests limits the range of views available to the public.
Who controls our media, a report by GetUp, claims News Corp (controlled by Rupert Murdoch) owns 59 per cent of metropolitan and national print media markets by readership, while Nine Entertainment owns 23 per cent of the readership share.
According to competition regulator ACCC, BHP and Fortescue dominate the materials and mining sector, and four companies own an 88 per cent market share of alcohol retail.
There are four companies who dominate (95 per cent) of department store chains, says the ACCC, and four companies own a 78 per cent market share of petrol retailing. Again, four companies dominate health insurance, with a 93 per cent market share, and the ACCC says the top four airlines have a 91 per cent market share in domestic air travel.
The main antitrust legislation in Australia is the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA). It aims to prevent cartel conduct (price fixing, market sharing, output restrictions, bid rigging) and anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions.
Perhaps strengthening these laws will help with spiralling inflation?
Hans Lovejoy, editor
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