Incremental Costs

Soft-headed Lefties are always going on about the evils of cheap labor, using children as workers, and paying “fair wages”.  Then there’s the use of agricultural pesticides to improve yields, which is doubleplusungood.  Of course, they still expect to pay low prices for, say, their fruits and vegetables, as these neo-Marxists don’t have the first clue about how an economy actually works.

So we come to this breathless headline:

Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Farm Squat Shop is over 200% more expensive for essential items than the nearest supermarket.

Well, yes.  He pays his staff (“workers”) well, doesn’t use pesticides, and charges prices that will yield his business a profit so that he can afford the costs of complying with government regulations.  (He does not pay himself or his shop manager / girlfriend Lisa a salary, for obvious reasons, although technically speaking he should.)

All that said, the quality of the farm shop’s products is beyond reproach — fresh milk, vegetables and fruits, homemade honey from his own bees — and all those things that the high-end Waitrose chain, for example, have traded on for years.

And so his prices are higher than those of the local supermarket (Aldi, a “budget” operation if ever there was one) only six miles away, leading one to ask that if his prices are indeed that unbearably high, why are there long lines of people queuing up to buy the stuff? (Answer:  because it’s the Diddly Squat brand.)

One would question why the “researchers” chose to use EDLP (everyday low price) Aldi rather than pricey Waitrose — answer:  because the price disparity might not be that great, if there was any disparity at all… oops.

And let’s not forget that The Greatest Living Englishman is a frequent target for The Envious Set, because he’s wealthy and successful — just not as a result of farming.

Journalists… those who talk about everything, but know absolutely nothing.