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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

#171

Post by em500 »

yuropeen wrote: post #52
toxik wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is completely normal, though. Inflation is not the exact price adjustment of every basket of goods over time, that is simply not possible to represent in a single number - rather, it is some arbitrarily chosen basket of goods meant to represent an average household. It does not have to be perfect to be meaningful.

> That is completely normal, though. If not using basics like food, fuel, and pricing on rent or mortgage - what are we basing the numbers off of? If it's the stable price of a Spotify subscription, rather than real goods needed to survive, something is horribly off.

The basket and weights for UK CPI are here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/arti...

and for the US: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm

The weights are based on estimates of how consumers actually spend on different goods and services, rather than on how much someone would need to spend for subsistence or survival.

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

#172

Post by vogre »

jgilias wrote: post #121
ericmay wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay well the Chinese model of silently building up the capabilities to do that is one way to approach the issue. Sure, but you also can't help chaotic, random events taking place that make any potential plans to do that go up in smoke. The alternative in this specific issue (i.e. not standing up to Russia) is likely just further dependency on oil/natural gas from Russia and eventually just being outright colonized…

If it was _just_ getting colonized, that's one thing. The alternative for Baltics is not that benign. See Mariupol, Buchi, Irpin, etc, etc, etc...

Why not see Armenia or even modern Georgia, who don't use aggressive rhetorics on Russia, don't deploy NATO weapons and feel okay?

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

#174

Post by mhitza »

kosyblysk666 wrote: post #145

scare pepole, lock down everything, print all the money you can,,,,,,then act surprised when inflation hits humans..... :facepalm:

Your comment is a sarcastic take, but comments along those lines were what some of us pointed out last year. While people were under lockdown, money didn't circulate enough for it to be reflective in terms of inflation (excepting the stock/crypto market). EU opened up briefly for the mid-Summer (covid pass) till mid-Autumn and then closed back up. Then some countries gave up on the covid battle and started reopening during the winter holidays and stayed open since.

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

#175

Post by espadrine »

rjzzleep wrote: post #89
jgilias wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> France had one of the most advanced nuclear facilities on the globe. And instead of investing in it, Macron sold it off to GE

That is misleading. The nuclear facilities were not sold to GE, only Alstom Power Systems, which engineers turbines. (The nuclear engineering part was never sold.) Furthermore, it was sold for $13B and is being rebought by the French EDF €175M.

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

#176

Post by photochemsyn »

rexreed wrote: post #86
yodsanklai wrote: post #36

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 mate…

As far as labor competition, that only works if there are a wide variety of employers, rather than a few primary employers (Amazon, Walmart) who can effective set wages prices. Labor competition has also gone international, driving labor wages down in the US. Factors like these account for the relatively flat growth in bottom-level wages relative to CEO/shareholder wages, which have skyrocketed throughout the past 40-year neoliberal globalization period.

As far as this round of inflation, monetary supply arguments are a bit specious. The Fed's 'quantitative easing' (money printing goess brrrrr) is pretty trickle-down Reaganomics in practice, although they could have just printed monthly checks for average citizens instead of giving it all to large banks and corporations, who use it for things like stock buybacks.

A more plausible explanation is breakdown in the global supply chains and failure to build up resilient infrastructure domestically. Consider gasoline and diesel prices, which have knock-on effects in all transportation-related sectors (food delivery, goods delivery, commuter costs, etc.). In 2015 US crude oil exports were allowed for the first time since the early 1970s and at least one major refinery was closed. This has clearly impacted the supply of refined products in the USA:

"U.S. Fuel Exports Are Draining Domestic Diesel And Gasoline Supplies, May 2022"

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Fuel-E...

This is at least a simple concept: reduce supply when demand remains constant and prices will go up, aka inflation.

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

#177

Post by pessimizer »

panick21_ wrote: post #108
tejohnso wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was pretty common knowledge that inflation numbers are deceptive and easily manipulated. It's [controversial]. It's the decline of purchasing power over time based on a basket of goods / services. So it all depends on how you fill that basket. [controversial]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex....

That might work for some measures of inflation, but it doesn't work for the 'GDP Deflator' for example. That is a different way to measure inflation (and a more exact one) and it not so easy to fake. And even if we go with CPI stuff, the agencies that do these things try to stay consistent. At least in western countries they don't just do whatever they want. The idea that all departments of all western governments ar…

No, the idea that administrations game the numbers to support their previous actions and future proposals is a given. Diagnosing people as mentally ill because they understand this is scary.

The real problem is this class of claim:

There are secret statistics that support my reaction, which would without those statistics be obviously irrational. I do not have access to these statistics, because their existence is being intentionally hidden from me, but from my trips to the grocery store and discussions in the breakroom, I know what they are intuitively, with a fairly high precision. I have been confirmed correct by some people I've met on the internet who are saying the same thing.

If you felt this way, and could find enough people who also think this is true, you should be able to do a survey on your own, more representative basket of goods, and come up with a number that you find more meaningful. If you couldn't, you could at least attack the current basket of goods and methodology with specific criticisms, rather than vaguely plausible FUD. Instead, vaguely plausible FUD rules, because statistics that are not being offered are unfalsifiable.

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

#178

Post by dontbenebby »

Maybe issue is similar to the USA -- shared currency, wildly different costs of living.

That and the Germans or whatever think inflation caused WWII, so they... pushed a bunch of stupid policies that caused inflation because they also are scared of atoms.

We could have built safe breeder reactors to bridge the gap to solar, instead of, but Jill Stein's Russian Dolls "roved" across America, flinging Russian money around in such a manner we're gonna have to protest so they ban fracking in the parks next to playgrounds after a decade of being placed on lists for things as simple as attending a documentary where they show video of some poor bastard being able to set his tapwater on fire.[1] --- Citations:

[1] Вас повесят за шею до смерти на заправке, как Муссолини и его напарника, если вы не исправите свое поведение, "товарищи" (саркастические цитаты из пальцев) И извините за двусмысленность... это машинный перевод, но слова от человека.

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

#179

Post by Grimburger »

toxik wrote: post #67
yuropeen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is completely normal, though. If not using basics like food, fuel, and pricing on rent or mortgage - what are we basing the numbers off of? If it's the stable price of a Spotify subscription, rather than real goods needed to survive, something is horribly off.

That is exactly what inflation is computed from. Like literally.

I can agree with this but basket substitution is the dirty little secret of economists.

If the cost of meat goes up so much that everyone starts eating dog food, the inflation print will barely rise at all.

It's not a real measure for QoL which I hope most people would accept as being what societies actually strive for.

In fact most measures like GDP and a few others have no real bearing on increased living standards. GDP per capita should be the only real number when talking about economic growth for starters. Even then catastrophes like natural disasters and war bump up those numbers due to rebuilding so it's still quite a rough metric to report on each year.

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

#180

Post by lupire »

forinti wrote: post #136
gruez wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are right, and some central banks only use the basic interest rate as a remedy in all cases. It seems to me that case 2 cannot be solved through this mechanism. It can. Interest rates rise -> money becomes more expensive -> investment dries up -> demand is quenched -> things become cheap again

It seems to me that the medicine is worse than the disease in this case.

The alternative destroys the whole economy.

Money is a social construct. If you untether it from any notion of value, it dies, and we're back to barter and subsistence farming or switching to a foreign currency.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp

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