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UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#331

Post by mclightning »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #276
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #174

The UK is declining, and people are starting to notice it. People are blaming the government, and clamouring for more support and money, but unfortunately I suspect it’s not that simple. The elephant in the room, in my opinion, is that we simply don’t have the money to maintain the standard of living we once enjoyed. Almost all political conversations here are contingent on this fact, but this underlying problem is r…

From the time when I used to live in UK - You guys have almost no manufacturing and no tech sector. You are importing everything from abroad, yet there is nothing interesting in UK, no reason why I should ever want to get a work visa into the UK. Only thing which works is finance services, but you completely forget on that one during Brexit and you were concentrated on fishing which has almost comically low fraction…

I just moved to UK from Sweden just 6 months ago. I was guessing, there would be a strong will to UnBrexit at this point with all the empirical evidence that Brexit failed

But quite surprisingly, this is not the case. I don't have enough information to say why, but I am definitely shocked on the lack of discourse on the matter.

There are some small movements, but it goes largely unreported by the mainstream media. There was a 10.000 people march recently in Westminster to UnBrexit and BBC didn't even report it.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#332

Post by kaashif »

gw98 wrote: post #322
kaashif wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from the UK to the US. Increased risk, increased reward. And if I'm fired, laid off, or deported, worst case I just go back to the UK having already earned hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I would have in the UK.

You can make the money in the UK if you know what you're doing.

I don't think there's any debate that software engineers are paid much more on average in the US, or that the number of highly paid jobs is much greater in the US.

Even at within the same firm, for the same job, it seems like UK engineers are usually paid much less than US ones.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#333

Post by tzs »

mike_hearn wrote: post #223
ceejayoz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which wasn’t that far from succeeding, at 44%. Since then, they were made to leave the EU, the Queen died, and the party that proposed it has done well electorally.

The party that proposed it did well electorally last time too. Apparently there are lots of people in Scotland who vote for the SNP without fully agreeing with their goals. I'm neutral on the topic of Scottish independence but from a purely tactical perspective it'd be surprising if another referendum could be won at the moment. Sturgeon appears to know that and looks a lot like she's trying to string the SNP base al…

I might be misremembering, but I thought I read after the previous Scottish independence vote that a lot of those that wanted Scotland to become an independent country that joins the EU voted against independence because they weren't sure than an independent Scotland could gain EU membership, and so voted to stay in the UK so they could stay in the EU.

Presumably with the UK now out of the EU, many of those people would vote for independence. (And I believe Spain, which was the country people were most worried about vetoing an independent Scotland joining the EU because they don't want to encourage those regions of Spain that want to break away has since said that it would have no objection as long as Scottish independence happens in a way that is legal under UK law).

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#334

Post by Taurenking »

davewritescode wrote: post #212
mike_hearn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This generic explanation for everything always gets posted to HN whenever the UK comes up in any capacity, but it isn't "fact based economics". Inflation is surging throughout Europe and the world. Trading Economics has a useful map that visualizes it: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate Inflation is high because governments printed enormous sums of money to fund lockdowns and furloughs. Helicopt…

We have evidence that Brexit is making food imports more expensive and the UK has been slow to tackle inflation in the first place. Like yes, increasing the money supply is the root cause here but nobody ever states what the alternative should’ve been.

No post body was provided.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#335

Post by rayiner »

kergonath wrote: post #321
rayiner wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The alternative is to make sure that you provide a mechanism to bring the best and brightest to your country instead of coddling the least productive at home. Importing other countries’ elites seems like a bad thing for the proles both at home, and the country losing their best and brightest. Seems like a better alternative would be to do the exact opposite: force elites to stay in their home country and make it be…

> Seems like a better alternative would be to do the exact opposite: force elites to stay in their home country and make it better. Absolutely not! We need people in position to make decisions to see the world and understand it, not be insular nationalists because they know no other country. We need more people high up in government who are familiar with the mainstream ideas and cultural quirks of other countries, an…

No, we don’t need those people. Smart elites don’t make a great country. If they did, India would be a great country. What makes a great country is virtuous common people.

There is a new book describing research that shows that even after four generations, immigrants retain about half of the attitudes of their home countries: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594.

A fundamental feature of American culture is that it idolizes the “common man.” When you allow elites from other countries to immigrate to the US, you’re importing the cultural elitism from those countries, and destroying American culture in the process.

My family immigrated from Bangladesh to northern Virginia in 1989. When I was growing up, it was an egalitarian, decent place. But we were a wave of elite immigrants, and now 30 years later it’s unrecognizable. Much wealthier, sure. There’s tech jobs and elite immigrants to fill them. But the culture has changed completely. And what’s the upside for the people who were already there? Do they really benefit from Google employees pricing them out of housing, etc?

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#336

Post by rayiner »

davewritescode wrote: post #327
rayiner wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The alternative is to make sure that you provide a mechanism to bring the best and brightest to your country instead of coddling the least productive at home. Importing other countries’ elites seems like a bad thing for the proles both at home, and the country losing their best and brightest. Seems like a better alternative would be to do the exact opposite: force elites to stay in their home country and make it be…

If you're strictly rooting for the United States to keep it's lead on the rest of the world (which I unapologetically am) then you do your best to to attract the best and brightest wherever they are.

How is that better for the median person than America being merely competent in various industries? Life seems quite nice for ordinary folks in Sweden or France or Germany. Yeah they don’t have Facebook or Apple, but are they really worse off for it?

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#337

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #63
kergonath wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be ok in the long term. It has the resources to overcome its current issues (most of them self-inflicted). However, the next decade or two might be quite difficult. To be fair, there is some justice in it. You (collectively, as a country, not you personally) cannot keep voting for the same failed ideologies and then complain when the consequences come. This needs to be the end of Toryism as it currently exist…

Blaming “Toryism” is pretty odd. You think the economic problems affecting the UK started in the last decade? To me this seems to be the product of Blair-era Labour, which gutted the country by shipping jobs and industrial capacity to Eastern Europe and China. Populist nationalism is rising throughout the western world. It’s a reaction to the failings of globalist liberalism, not the cause of those problems.

Manufacturing employment in the UK peaked in the 1960s and fell most precipitously in the 1980s, which cuts against your hypothesis.

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#338

Post by kentrado »

hiven wrote: post #283

I think it’s too easy (and tempting) for other countries to sit and poke and hypothesise that a country is falling apart. That was a just a case of sensationalising and far from the truth. As someone presently living in the U.K. it is the same beautiful country full of incredible views, kind people and exciting opportunity that it has always been. Pick any other country, America, France, Brazil, Germany, Australia et…

How is Germany falling apart?

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#339

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #337
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming “Toryism” is pretty odd. You think the economic problems affecting the UK started in the last decade? To me this seems to be the product of Blair-era Labour, which gutted the country by shipping jobs and industrial capacity to Eastern Europe and China. Populist nationalism is rising throughout the western world. It’s a reaction to the failings of globalist liberalism, not the cause of those problems.

Manufacturing employment in the UK peaked in the 1960s and fell most precipitously in the 1980s, which cuts against your hypothesis.

Manufacturing employment is declined due to lots of factors: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2020.00054...

> UK manufacturing employment fell especially steeply in the early 1980s during a recession triggered by a high exchange rate and high interest rates. The job losses during these years were documented in particular by Townsend (1983) and Fothergill and Guy (1991) and the process of deindustrialization more generally by Martin and Rowthorn (1986). The recession of the early 1990s added further major job losses (Gudgin, 1995). Thereafter, manufacturing output largely stagnated and manufacturing employment continued to slide even though the UK economy as a whole enjoyed 15 years of sustained economic growth.

What’s notable about New Labour was how manufacturing job losses continued even during a long period of sustained economic growth. Finance and knowledge sectors grew while manufacturing sectors declined.

Moreover, as to China specifically, the UK had little trade with China until 2000: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53468925.amp

Likewise immigration really got turbocharged under New Labour: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32162123

Re: UK food price inflation hit 16.2% in October – cost of food basics surging

#340

Post by kayamon »

yufeng66 wrote: post #325
jphsnsir wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but how long will the rest of the world accept the USD as universal currency. When they don't the US can't keep printing, so the US will do everything to keep its current position. The 'switch' will be the problem of our generation.

I have been in finance industry for more than 20 years. People have been talking about replacing USD as reserve currency for as long as I can remember. The problem is nothing else is better. EUR? JPY? GBP? CNY? Gold? All of them have more issues compared to USD.

There's currencies now you can trade online that aren't controlled by any one country.
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