Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

grocerygazette.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 1001 posts

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

#271

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #114
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.

This is a pretty lazy narrative. Prices are rising even in non-branded goods and markets. Smaller retailers are not-undercutting the bigger retailers. Couscous and margarine and eggs being more expensive across the board at the supplier level. This does not speak to any sort of cartel behavior.

[deleted]

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

#272

Post by kaanski »

Veen wrote: post #234
kaanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment. Not sure why but generally journos seem to write about issues like they are only hitting the UK when a simple google search shows they aren’t. It does come across like a weird concerted effort to paint the UK as collapsing since leaving the EU. The majority of journos seem to be able to write only negatively about UK cu…

> In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment. Especially on Hacker News. I tend to avoid UK-based posts on here because the content is fairly predictable: the UK is going to shit and Brexit is to blame, repeated ad nauseam in the absence of any evidence that it's true. If I wanted thoughtless UK doom mongering, I'd read the Guardian or the NYT.

Yeah I do the same. It seems to permeate into everything, even positives.

UK announcing research into x: comments will probably be negative and about how it’s a boondoggle.

UK company doing exciting stuff like fusion or quantum: comments will probably be negative and about how it’s a boondoggle.

It’s tiring.

Edit:

That being said it does lead to hilarious moments where I’ll read the Guardian and see a headline like “The NHS won’t make it to Christmas (for real this time) but it doesn’t matter because we’ll all be dead by then because of Brexit” and then I’ll see the Express in my corner shop with a headline like “Brexit HERO Boris makes Ursula von der Leyen CRY when he announced new BRITISH MOON BASE”

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

#273

Post by piuantiderp »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #184
jaqalopes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my buddy (31M) in London says he's having the time of his life. Making a lot of money at BP, parties every weekend, just moved into a nice flat with a partner. I suspect, just like in America, that if you're inside the "formal economy" (corporate job with real benefits and potential for career growth) your life is pretty great. If you're outside that (service worker, gig economy, small business owner, NE…

>Making a lot of money at BP, parties every weekend Sounds just like the roaring twenties.

Except the furniture is Ikea

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

#274

Post by aww_dang »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
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…

You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”. Fact is the inflation we are seeing here is caused by the after effects of Covid, the Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war and in the special case of UK - Brexit, which has lead to huge import shortages due to increased bureauc…

Do central bankers and other policy elites have no truck with financial elites? What does it mean when stimulus is injected into markets for the purpose of 'stabilizing' them? Are they not concerned with financial markets? This seems to be the directly stated objective of many economic policies.

Is this a conspiracy theory or a simple observation of incentives?

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

#275

Post by FpUser »

illiarian wrote: post #166
clnq wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But the price of food overall is inflating. I'm a senior programmer with outrageous salary, and I still paused yesterday looking at the price of beef. Went for chicken instead. I wish inflation numbers would also include things like "percentage of income spent on just living: food and shelter"

I was buying a piece of tenderloin in Costco once a week. In a short time the average price went from about $150 to $200. I could still afford it but something in me cringe so I stopped buying it. That is in Canada

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

#276

Post by bcrosby95 »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
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…

You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”. Fact is the inflation we are seeing here is caused by the after effects of Covid, the Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war and in the special case of UK - Brexit, which has lead to huge import shortages due to increased bureauc…

It's not really an active conspiracy. It's just the rich pursuing their own interests. When the workers or poor pursue their interests too effectively, the rich in positions of power make them take their medicine. But when the rich do it too effectively, well, that's just the free market and you can't do anything about that.

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

#277

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
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…

You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”. Fact is the inflation we are seeing here is caused by the after effects of Covid, the Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war and in the special case of UK - Brexit, which has lead to huge import shortages due to increased bureauc…

"rich" and "poor" are just holdovers from conquerer and conquered. Just because the mandate that one group acknowledge the other's right to create value by fiat (e.g. by stamping Caesar's face into a coin) is no longer delivered by guys with swords doesn't make it not a conspiracy by one group to keep another group in its place.

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

#278

Post by sparrish »

dt3ft wrote: post #216
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?

You think inflation can't happen in non-capitalistic economies?

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

#279

Post by tantalor »

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…

> the lower class suffers by far the most

This is a tautology. The lower class is defined that way. If they didn't suffer the most, they wouldn't be lower class.

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

#280

Post by jupp0r »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #231
jupp0r wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Definitely Brexit and not the half a £trillion we printed to fund Covid handouts.

Food prices were rising a lot in 2021 already. Here's a study that links Brexit consequences to food price increases. https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2022/l-Decem...
Post reply on HN