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

grocerygazette.co.uk

321–330 of 1001 posts

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

#321
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…

Despite being a net food importer, the UK continues to allow relatively high levels of immigration. While there are multiple causes for food price inflation, having more people living there certainly causes some upward pressure on prices.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

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

#322
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…

This is. Tired talking point and basically entirely lies. Necessity prices have risen by large margins in the name of inflation, but they have also recorded insane profits at historic levels.

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

#323
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…

"They" are the wealthy people, property owners and such, in society who make a scene if their wealth gets taxed any higher.

Every western society heavily taxes working, where often for me as a freelancer it hardly pays of to work more then 6-8 months per year.

But taxes on wealth are very low. And owning property often has many tax cuts, and tends to benefit from low interest rates.

The effect of it is is that either you play the wealth game through property or investing or you are lost out.

I think it would be fare to protect the assets people accumulate through hard work, but at the same time it should be more balanced then it is now and we shouldnt all have to be financial experts.

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

#324
post #196
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…

In the US, M2 increased 70% in 2 years. Of course prices are going up. Anything less than a 70% increase means companies have a ways to go to catch up.

I'm not sure about 70%, I can only see 33% in open sources, but either figure is huge and now everyone is with Pikachu face and blames everything but helicopter money.

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

#325
This is just further evidence that whatever problems the US has, things consistently keep being worse elsewhere, whether it's inflation (like in the UK or Germany, such as food and energy prices), unrest (like the protests in France), natural disasters (Turkey earthquake), etc. As much as both sides lament about the decline of freedoms and overreach of 'the state', in EL Salvador tens of thousands of people have been rounded up and arrested--due process be damned.

America continues to occupy a privileged position in the world of stability and prosperity despite always feeling on the precipice of civil war, unrest, or crisis--but that never quite gets there. What could have been a major banking crisis 2 weeks ago was averted by more coordination between policy makers, and of course, lot's of liquidity.

How long will it last? I don't know, but I don't want to bet against it either.

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

#327

I know this doesn't fit the European worldview, but if only they had Costco. They make 0-1% margin [0] on their groceries - which by the way is very high in quality. Essentially all their profit is from their annual membership fee. You have to buy massive quantities of everything though. This works well if you live in a huge North American house and have an SUV to transport your month's (year's?) groceries. [0] I saw…

We have Costco in the UK.

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

#328
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the economists, who predominantly say that inflation helps the poor, supposedly because they have loans.

For some reason when I hear people saying this I just picture them as thinking of the poor as having a mortgage on their second summer home or something like that.

... while being not creative enough, to eat cake, when out of bread.

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

#329

It is truly strange to see so many comments on Hacker News -- a message board owned by YCombinator, a startup accelerator whose actual mission is to launch wildly profitable companies -- talking conspiratorially about the wealthy being "parasites", lambasting "capitalism", pointing to increased profits as evidence of unscrupulous behavior.

Europeans are more aware of class struggle than people from the United States. They didn't have a McCarthyism red scare. Since this news is about an European country, it is no so strange that people complain about the system that brought this into being.

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

#330
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…

In the UK it is very hard not to look at it this way. Unlike the US and other countries, Covid stimulus was very much aimed at maintaining the status quo: there were no flat amount universal basic income style checks handed out to everyone as in the US - instead you got put on 80% furlough and had a large part of your salary paid for by the government. This basically meant the rich got ever richer whilst doing no work and the poor tried to scrape by. In addition, covid contract schemes were widely abused by business owners, the most high profile case being that of Conservative peer Michele Mone who made off with £200 million. It is estimated that billions of pounds of public money has been irretrievably lost through what is essentially government neglect and corruption.

On top of this, you've got Brexit which was orchestrated by the right wing conservative aristocracy class for their own benefit. And we've also had a conservative government that has not only not pursued a green agenda over the last 13 years, but bent over backwards to get Russian energy money.

So yes, the factors leading to inflation were outside of control. But that doesn't change the fact that the powers that be in this country have been running the country in their own self interests and have given up on even pretending otherwise and that is why the UK is being hit harder by inflation than any other country in the western world. They were so high on their own supply they even elected Liz Truss to cut taxes in an inflationary environment and only reluctantly accepted that they weren't going to get away with it when the global market responded by saying it would tank the property market (which the whole stack of cards relies on).

> Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”.

This is the UK with it's notorious and very real class and aristocracy system. They don't call the royal family "the firm" for nothing.

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