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Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

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Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#81
post #32
post #14

Worth noting that Estonia is on the Euro.

Yes, I had to check that. Question which I won't expect the "inflation is always and only caused by money printing" believers to answer: how is there different inflation in different Eurozone countries?

> Question which I won't expect the "inflation is always and only caused by money printing" believers

Who are these people? I’ve obviously heard of people complaining about fed money printing causing inflation, but I never heard anyone go as far to say that’s the only cause of inflation.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#82
post #61
post #35

Doesnt' every country calculate their inflation separately? Because living in Germany, that 7% is laughable. Nothing has risen by that little of an amount. Not food, rent, petrol, etc. Well, I do know of something that has risen to less than 7%: salaries.

When I look at the Swedish numbers I feel the same and then I see that prices went down for "photography, audiovisual and computer equipment" and... Nothing else. Fuel is up 40+%, food by 8-10%, housing by 2%, electricity by 30+%. How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%?? I do need to do proper research on the models because just using my common sense it doesn't make any fucking sense...

It's called "politician's lies"

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#83
post #3

Probably the only country that is being honest about its inflation amount then.

The source is eurostat which is an EU institution. But yes. I too think the numbers are correct and largely representative of what is going on.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#84

I don't understand inflation. I understand that it's a measure of the price of things, but for me there should be two types of inflations 1. a dilution of money. Let say a central bank injects a lot of new money, then all prices will be higher, but salary will be higher too, and the overall effect is neutral 2. some prices increase due to change in supply or demand (e.g. gas or cereal), but salaries and everything el…

> Let say a central bank injects a lot of new money, then all prices will be higher, but salary will be higher too I'm not in a place to fetch any sources right now, but hasn't it been proven that wage growth has not been keeping up with increases in money supply, or inflation over the last couple of decades? Particularly for manual labor or service jobs. You seem to assume that one would automatically track the othe…

During the Bretton Woods era, the quasi-gold-standard that reigned until Nixon floated the dollar, hourly wage rates and productivity in the US were pretty closely correlated. In the years after, which saw a huge realignment in finance, the 70s oil crisis, and a general weakening of labour power, this relationship broke down, with an almost complete severance of the relationship.

Cf. http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/uploader/image/201...

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#85

I am guessing the Baltic countries are hit hard by the Russia sanctions and the lack of cheap energy and food imports that has to come from somewhere else now.

Here in Lithuania we were already independent from Russian gas and oil (lesson learned over the decades), and had liquid natural gas terminal for a few years. But inflation is also very high.

It's easy for small country like Lithuania, but completely impossible for country like Germany. There is not enough gas without Russian one to feed its industry.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#86

I don't understand inflation. I understand that it's a measure of the price of things, but for me there should be two types of inflations 1. a dilution of money. Let say a central bank injects a lot of new money, then all prices will be higher, but salary will be higher too, and the overall effect is neutral 2. some prices increase due to change in supply or demand (e.g. gas or cereal), but salaries and everything el…

An increase in the supply of money doesn't correlate to the distribution of that increased supply into the hands of consumers (by way of salaries). Prices go up, and the cost burden of those prices are unequally distributed. Raw materials prices are usually first to increase in price and labor costs usually lag. Labor costs are usually determined by supply and demand of available labor rather than underlying raw materials costs or availability of money supply. The ability for governments and companies to borrow at low interest rates usually has a higher impact, but monetary policy uses interest rates to regulate the impact of inflation.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#87

Are there public information, which data is used for inflation calculation per country?

Usually European countries would use the HICP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonised_Index_of_Consumer_P... This ought to ensure inflation rates are at least comparable on some level between countries.

Thank you!

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#88
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they do that? Isn't that setting them up for a pension crisis in the future?

You will still get the state pension. The part you are able to cash out is managed by other funds(banks etc) and it would act as an extra to state offered pension.

> You will still get the state pension

What exactly would fund it then? Pensions system typically works by current generation providing for the previous. If we allow newer generations to "cash out", what would be the source of funding?

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#89
post #39

I am guessing the Baltic countries are hit hard by the Russia sanctions and the lack of cheap energy and food imports that has to come from somewhere else now.

Exactly. If you notice, the second and third place are taken by Lithuania and Latvia respectively. A lot of 'cheapness' in all kinds of sectors came from RUS/UKR/BEL somewhere upstream. Building materials being a prime example. So, a combined effect of energy prices, sanctions on RUS, a war raging in Ukraine. But then, as Estonian prime minister said recently - sure, gas is expensive, but freedom is priceless.

I'm sorry, but the Estonian prime minister is a Eurocrat idiot that lacks basic understanding of how either military or economy work or operate. You want to be independent of Hydrocarbons and Russian commodities? Okay well the Chinese model of silently building up the capabilities to do that is one way to approach the issue. France is an even better example of the idiocy of this as France had one of the most advanced nuclear facilities on the globe. And instead of investing in it, Macron sold it off to GE, further crippling its own ability to say goodbye to Russia. Who's advising these people that they don't even have the most basic understanding of how fertilizers tie into the food supply.

I used to think that all we need in Government is fresh wind which will solve most our problems, but I'm realizing that age isn't by itself either the problem or the solution. See Biden for old age or Europe for young age destructive leadership. Apparently not all wind is fresh and some of it is rotten and smells like sewage.

I'm completely baffled at how people cannot comprehend basic co-dependencies in the economies, supply chain or whatever other part that is happening. The whole "we need to suffer to show a moral lesson" is easy for people to say that have had nothing to sacrifice and never had to work hard for anything in their life while never in history have so many people dropped out of the middle class in European societies.

EDIT: Don't drink your own kool-aid, is a good summary I've been given about the whole situation. European leaders massively overestimating their own importance and capability in the world(both economic and military) based on their own inflated GDP numbers and MIC commercials.

EDIT 2: It's unfortunate that even in such a platform there is no rational thinking about something that is objectively true based on propaganda that actually came from the other side. "Russia is this" "Russia is that".

Facts are still facts.

You need fertilizer to feed people. Fertilizers are byproducts of Gas production. Fertilizer prices have been rising because of dis-incentivization of hydrocarbons. Nuclear is still a lot cleaner than most of the green energy alternatives. It didn't start in February 2022 even though the white house would like you to believe that[1].

Even the Ombudsman for human rights of Ukraine that was recently fired for constantly lying, said that she has been lying about Russian war crimes to turn public opinion against Russia[2].

EDIT 3: The US DoJ used the FCPA(Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) to threaten the Alstom leadership to sell off to GE. GE then buys the nuclear business and dismantles its plants in 2019 contrary to previous promises[3]. For all the talk of "oh we'll just buy it back", it's unclear what exactly is being bought back, how much it costs to rebuild capabilities that were destroyed and how much of the IP is actually sold back. My guess is, very little. It's odd that people act like it's just a little blip, when it's very clearly an geopolitical attack on one of the most important parts of french infrastructure.

[1] https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu/2022/01/12/report-analyzes-re...

[2] https://lb.ua/news/2022/06/03/518875_lyudmila_denisova_azovt...

[3] https://www.entreprendre.fr/alstom-general-electric-le-piege...

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#90
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation isn't meant to measure the change in consumer purchasing power. There's CPI and PPI and other measures to measure how prices change to different groups. If you want to measure the change in purchasing power just measure corporate revenues by sector to PPI by sector. Or CPI to HH or personal income.

> just measure corporate revenues by sector to PPI by sector. Or CPI to HH or personal income This sounds very cryptic to me. Could someone explain what this means, and why it measures changes in purchasing power?

CPI is supposed to measure the change in prices as it affects consumers.

It's obviously not perfect. Not all consumers have the same type of spending. In particular, the housing component...

Anyway - if consumer prices go up 10%, but HH income goes up only 2% - then consumers have lost ~8% of their purchasing power.

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