61–70 of 72 posts
Sort of misleading to use the word “inflation” when this seems to be primarily driven by climate related factors: https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2021/09/10/Out-of-co...
In our modern economy, prices are often determined by supply, which can be influenced by factors like climate. Absolutely expected that it would cause inflation.
So... as a pasta-loving American, wouldn't this affect us as well? I understand markets can be different but they're talking about Canadian wheat exports, not Italian domestic production.
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Wow. Just a few Kms across the Mediterranean, Pasta sells for around 0.29€/kg. Also, this is the "favorite?" food for people who have tight incomes, so they might be very sensitive to these changes. > Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021. It's only a matter of time it spreads to the rest of the basket. I guess the pro-MMT fol…
I'm pro-MMT, not hiding. From the article, that you obviously didn't bother to read: "Drought and heat continued to hurt the wheat harvest in July in Canada, the world’s biggest supplier of durum wheat, months after a harsh winter hit the Russian crop. Grain shipments from Western Canadian port terminal elevators tumbled 41% in the third week of August from a year-ago, according to a Quorum Corp. report. European cro…
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For anyone else wondering about MMT, fascinating: https://www.investopedia.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-4588...
So basically, the way I understand it, money is just a means of getting people to do work. All of this work/activity is for fiat currency what gold was in the gold standard. So the ceiling is much higher, but there's still a ceiling - go too high and your currency is in trouble. Also manage the removal of money properly - too much tax and people are in trouble, which leads to your currency being in trouble. Can it ev…
More like get (or enable) people to trade with one another.
> So the ceiling is much higher, but there's still a ceiling - go too high and your currency is in trouble.
I think this is the problem with MMT as it doesn't give an answer to what should you use to store wealth. Money should not be used to store wealth (that's not its goal) but to make a transaction possible between two counter-parties.
> Can it ever recover if people lose trust in it? Since that's a major part of what's keeping such a system going.
You shouldn't really care. Think if we can develop a system where one could work and exchange value in one currency, and store value in another currency. The first currency should disappear as soon as the transaction ends, and should appear as soon as there is a need to transact. The second currency gives a society IOU to give you a transaction in the first currency in the future.
Not sure how to do it, really.
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>>Can it ever recover if people lose trust in it? Since that's a major part of what's keeping such a system going. This is the most important thing MMT supporters seem to ignore. Fiat money is a confidence game and all the theories will be pointless if people lose trust in the money.
A government only accept its currency to pay taxes -> you have to pay taxes -> you need the currency even if you lose trust in it. It's the power of raising taxes what gives money its value. "Variations of the modern-money narrative are found repeatedly throughout history. The levying of monetary taxes to create waged labor was “a nearly universal experience throughout Africa” in the colonial era, explains economist…
People can convert their BTC to USD at their obligation day and then your currency is only worth what % you collect in taxes. I don't think taxation will be the model for MMT, and only when you separate taxation, investment (storage of wealth) and daily transactions that you can get a healthy working system.
Italian here. I don’t see this price increase at the moment. Anyway going from 2-3€/kg to 2,3-3,6€/kg wouldn’t make big difference. Pasta is already very cheap. Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021.
Wow. Just a few Kms across the Mediterranean, Pasta sells for around 0.29€/kg. Also, this is the "favorite?" food for people who have tight incomes, so they might be very sensitive to these changes. > Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021. It's only a matter of time it spreads to the rest of the basket. I guess the pro-MMT fol…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With both France and the UK each projected to see a more than a 5-million-tonne reduction in their 2020-21 wheat crops, EU wheat output is forecast to fall by nearly 11 million tonnes year-on-year to 144 million tonnes due to a 700,000-hectare decrease in planted area. That’s seems like they are removing land from production unless I understand that wrong.
I could be reading it wrong, but based on this: > The European Union’s grain output in 2020-21 is forecast to decline by 3% over the previous year due to extremely challenging planting conditions My understanding is that they cannot plant due to the weather conditions.
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There certainly was a massive late cold that too (extremely rare) impacted the Rhône banks (big fruit region in France). I don't know about Italy but we're in for a very expensive turn of year. I'm not surprised wheat is touched too. My only gripe is that prices usually don't come down when the original problem causing the spike went away (say one or two years after). I'd like to understand why but feel it's one of t…
Prices do frequently come down for wheat and other agricultural commodities. However those commodity prices are only loosely correlated to prices that you pay at the grocery store. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/wheat
Italian here. I don’t see this price increase at the moment. Anyway going from 2-3€/kg to 2,3-3,6€/kg wouldn’t make big difference. Pasta is already very cheap. Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021.
Wow. Just a few Kms across the Mediterranean, Pasta sells for around 0.29€/kg. Also, this is the "favorite?" food for people who have tight incomes, so they might be very sensitive to these changes. > Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021. It's only a matter of time it spreads to the rest of the basket. I guess the pro-MMT fol…
Is there a reason why every price increase is referred to as "inflation" these days? I thought inflation had more to do with debasement of a currency than price fluctuations due to supply and demand, with the key functional distinction being that the former can be hard to reverse while the latter can self-correct given time (e.g. the lumber price increase we saw this summer).