Why are
prices so high? Someone is getting rich, and it’s not the average consumer. But
if you take a look at the incomes of the owners
of the major supermarket chains in this country, that will shed some light on
the matter. They are quite wealthy; in fact, they are some of the wealthiest
people in this country. They control the food prices; the farmers who are
always being blamed for the high price of food do not. Farmers are subsidized in many
countries; it’s a tricky and difficult profession and I don’t begrudge them the
subsidies if this is what helps them to live and as long as the subsidies are
reasonable. I have a problem with the middlemen—that group of people who bring
the consumer goods to us. Again, I don’t mind paying a 15% or 20% markup so
that they can make some profit from importing goods for us to buy. I mind when
the markup is 300% or 600%. There is no reason other than pure profit that
dental floss and aspirin cost the exorbitant prices they do at present. It
reminds me of how middlemen have milked my own profession for years and made
huge profits. The suppliers of medical
research items like antibodies, buffers and other reagents have charged sales tax
on items that should have been tax-free because they were being used for
research. They also marked up prices for many of these items by 100% or more. So you had an insane markup plus 25% sales tax. Fair? No. They were finally forced to implement the tax-free policy and made it as difficult
as possible to implement. It always surprised me that hospitals and research institutions were not more aggressive and adamant about having this tax-free policy enforced many years ago already, considering the financial difficulties many find themselves in at present.
Showing posts with label importers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label importers. Show all posts
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Buying it on Amazon (or how I avoid paying high Norwegian prices)
I thought
I’d put in my two cents concerning the discussion about how expensive it is to
be a tourist in Norway. There have been a number of recent articles about exactly
this topic—how expensive it is to travel in Scandinavia, and especially in
Norway—and some of them are pretty funny, at least to me, since I recognize my
own reactions (and a bit of shock) to much of what is written in them. Try this
recent article, for example http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/scandinavia-on-125-a-day/?hpw). Tourists are not the only ones
who are shocked at the high cost of living here; I’ve lived here for twenty-two
years and I’m still often taken aback at how much things cost. It’s not so much
housing prices (which are comparable to Manhattan and other large cities around
the world), but it’s other things, like cars, eating out, gasoline, groceries
and other necessities. However, a number of low-price supermarkets have sprung
up in Oslo in recent years; here you can find some bargains and that’s always a
good thing. Prices in Norway for different items can be shocking; you need to
take a deep breath at times and stop converting the prices to American dollars
if you’re an American expat. Because if you continue to convert, you will
realize how much money you are really paying just to live, and it’s not to
live extravagantly. For example, if you convert, you will find that you are
paying twenty dollars for one, I repeat,
one dental floss dispenser at local pharmacies. It doesn’t matter where you
are—in the rich or less rich city areas—prices are the same. And the dental
floss is not manufactured in Norway, it is imported. It is good old Johnson
& Johnson dental floss that you can find on Amazon for a fraction of the Norwegian
price. In fact, a package of six
dental floss dispensers (100 yards each, more or less the same size as what is
available for sale here), costs about twenty dollars on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Reach-Dentotape-Designed-spaced-Unflavored/dp/B003XDVERE/ref=pd_sim_hpc_1). In other words, you’re being
suckered if you pay that price for one floss dispenser in this country. So
guess who recently ordered dental floss from Amazon. Even if I pay
international shipping costs, which are not much, the total price for six
dispensers is still much cheaper than what I would pay for one here in Oslo.
And so it goes. Take aspirin. Genuine
Bayer aspirin (325mg 200 coated tablets)
on Amazon costs 9.47 dollars (http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Bayer-Aspirin-Tablets-Coated/dp/B001LFG0OI/ref=pd_sim_hpc_1); at an online Norwegian pharmacy, I can get
a package of 20 aspirin tablets (440
mg) for 7 dollars. It borders on the ridiculous. Of course, healthcare
costs are ‘lower’ in this country than in the USA; but wage earners in Norway
pay for universal healthcare through their taxes (at present, the sales tax is
25%), as well as taxes on gasoline, liquor, and cigarettes. I don’t have a
problem with paying taxes to fund universal healthcare (something Americans
should think more about so that healthcare became more accessible to all), but
just so the point is made—healthcare is not free
in this country by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing in this world comes
for free. But it would be nice not to have to pay through the nose for some
basic items like dental floss and aspirin. So whenever I am in the USA, I stock
up on such things; it’s worth it. Norwegians pay their taxes willingly, but
never believe for one second that they don’t want a bargain if they can get
one. Those Norwegians who live on the east side of the country save money by
shopping for groceries and liquor in Sweden, where prices are much cheaper. And
when they travel, they stock up on duty-free items (e.g. liquor and tobacco
products) on their return. And duty-free prices are still expensive, just
considerably less expensive than the usual prices.
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