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UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

grocerygazette.co.uk

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Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#211

Post by mytailorisrich »

makomk wrote: post #187
mytailorisrich wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economy is not great but certainly not in free fall. Most people are ok. Crime is no worse than in other major European countries. There are no riots in London (looking at you, Paris...)

On the other hand, according to certain parts of the UK press those riots in France are a sign that their politics is far healthier than the awful state of politics here (looking at you, Guardian)...

On the contrary, those riots show that every important issue in France is hijacked by violent far left militants who don't want to debate but to bring "the system" down or just destroy as much property as they can get away with. That is not healthy. Riots on the pretext that the retirement age increases by 2 years to an age still below the EU average is not a sign of healthy politics.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#212

Post by benjaminwootton »

martinald wrote: post #182
samhuk wrote: post #167

As a person living in the UK, I have definitely noticed a considerable rise in unit prices. One of many examples is that a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 recently, which was a shocker. Toilet roll prices, as ever what the news loves to talk about, has exploded, increasing by around 70% since 2020 by my anecdotal observation. A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or…

Assets are deflating at the moment though. S&P500 is down, property prices are down, etc. Asset prices are highly inversely correlated to interest rates, so for a 'rich' person you are actually much better off without inflation, as interest rates are lower and asset prices rise faster.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. Stock prices are on the slide and property prices and rental yields are extremely precarious.

I also agree that low rates were good as you could invest in property with leverage and in businesses which could borrow and raise money to cheaply to grow.

Nobody is having a good time right now.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#213

Post by nyerp »

clnq wrote: post #60
illiarian wrote: post #29

Meanwhile in Sweden the CEO of ICA, the largest supermarket chain in the country (53% of the market) said yesterday: "It is actually the consumer who controls what they are prepared to pay for a product. In the end, it is they who decide." https://omni.se/icas-vd-det-ar-kunderna-som-avgor-matpriset/...

The consumer decides what they are prepared to pay for a product, unless the demand is inelastic. And for food overall, the demand is inelastic. Consumers cannot just say "food is too expensive for me, so I think I'm going to to go without it this month". They can choose between the individual products they buy, so it wouldn't be a problem if just some food items got expensive. But the price of food overall is inflat…

> They can choose between the individual products they buy, so it wouldn't be a problem if just some food items got expensive. But the price of food overall is inflating.

That is a false binary. You can still buy flour (or naan or pita), cheese and tomato sauce instead of pre-made pizzas, sacrificing your time against rising food costs. You can buy lentils instead of steak, sacrificing your preferences against rising food costs. Or you can travel further to a warehouse store and buy in bulk...

When enough people act empowered in the face of adversity, we don't have to sweat "greedflation". Retailers will learn their lesson.

Yes, I understand rising prices make life worse. But don't let anyone tell you there's nothing you can do about it. Learn to cook, change stores, eat differently, maybe even move.

"My Pizza Pops went up 25%, I am powerless in the face of inflation!" Just no.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#215

Post by simonh »

magicalist wrote: post #171
Tyrek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gouging is an incredibly unhelpful context in a macroeconomic sense. In cases of shorter term scarcity (e.g. toilet paper during early covid), you can have instances of gouging. But over a longer-term period where prices are calibrating to demand/supply dynamics, price increases simply reflect the shifting balance between supply and demand. Should we be concerned about why there are shifts in demand/supply? Sure.(In…

[flagged]

Increased prices and price gouging are not the same thing. If production costs are up, and they are up, then prices can go up without anyone making any more money. You have to actually look at why prices are going up.

The other factor is that rising prices often mean an increased need for investment by producers. That investment capital has to come from somewhere, so what look like increased profits based on current cost structures can actually be entirely justified if the company then needs to invest that money in order to get production volumes up and cope with increased capital costs.

I don't know enough about the food industry to be able to say which of these is happening, in which sector or country, but these are much more complex issues that the knee jerk reactions here imply. What I can say is, it seems to me that if the reduced supply from Ukraine and Russia is going to be made up, somebody somewhere is gong to have to ramp up food production an awful lot, and I can't imagine that's going to be cheap.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#216

Post by dt3ft »

samhuk wrote: post #167

As a person living in the UK, I have definitely noticed a considerable rise in unit prices. One of many examples is that a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 recently, which was a shocker. Toilet roll prices, as ever what the news loves to talk about, has exploded, increasing by around 70% since 2020 by my anecdotal observation. A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or…

> It's the dark, sinister side of inflation

You mean dark, sinister side of capitalism, right?

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#217

Post by jbstack »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
boc wrote: post #35

Demand for food is inelastic, so it makes sense that companies are raising prices as high as possible since people still have to eat. Generally this leads to price competition from other food brands, but when single companies own dozens/hundreds of food brands it’s easy to act like a cartel and keep prices high.

> Demand for food is inelastic I doubt it. I've read that Americans throw away 40% of their food. Obesity rates suggest people eat far more than they need to. And there are major choices in what to eat - cheap vs expensive calories.

> Obesity rates suggest people eat far more than they need to.

Obesity rates are also higher among poorer segments of society than wealthy, so it isn't necessarily a given that obese people will choose to eat less just because doing so will make them poorer due to higher prices.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#218

Post by PartiallyTyped »

c0brac0bra wrote: post #64
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #11

What about grocery store profit margins? > Bread was up 20.8%, with pasta products and couscous up 25.3% This is unjustified. Under no circumstances could this happen unless a) price gauging, or b) supply chain is drying up. Edit for the ignorant: > The UK is largely self-sufficient in production of grains, producing over 100% of domestic consumption of oats and barley and over 90% of wheat. Average yields over recen…

Well we saw extreme disruption in the supply of fertilizer and some extremely poor growing seasons in some bread basket reasons around the world simultaneously, if I recall correctly (which I might not be).

That's supply chain issue, so covered by my point, but UK is largely self-sufficient wrt to grains [1].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food...

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#219

Post by jupp0r »

samhuk wrote: post #167

As a person living in the UK, I have definitely noticed a considerable rise in unit prices. One of many examples is that a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 recently, which was a shocker. Toilet roll prices, as ever what the news loves to talk about, has exploded, increasing by around 70% since 2020 by my anecdotal observation. A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or…

Tragically (and perhaps comically) it's the blue collar class that is the cause of all of this by voting for Brexit.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#220

Post by swarnie »

GalenErso wrote: post #10

As someone who doesn't live in the UK, the impression I get from headlines is that the UK is becoming poorer by the day, the NHS has collapsed, crime is exploding, poverty is rising, most people can't afford anything anymore, the Royal Mail is hanging by a thread, and the economy is in free fall. What's the reality? In London and outside?

I've experienced none of what you've described.

32, tech worker, just bought a house in a village in the south... Yes my vegetables are a bit more expensive week to week, maybe i need to go to another store to buy one or two specific things but generally life is fine.

Still getting pay rises, still getting bonuses. Generally life is more comfortable for me than its ever been.

Someone set fire to a bin last week, does that count as an increase in crime?

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