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

grocerygazette.co.uk

531–540 of 1001 posts

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

#531
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. The solution to allowing lower classes to have more stuff is to make it easier for everybody to produ…

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Because you get shortages.

See the Nixon era price controls and how they failed to get inflation under control.

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

#532

For reference, that's a fairly average value for Europe at the moment. Not sure why the UK is being singled out. https://i.redd.it/8hbhiqhowjpa1.png

Its not average for Europe. Aside from Germany, rest of Europe is at around ~10%. The UK is being singled out because its not able to import the groceries it used to do before Brexit now - there has been a low yield crop season in most parts of Europe and the domestic demand for groceries has literally exhausted the supply that can be exported. Since the UK is out of the Eu, its not possible to access the Eu domestic…

What's around ~10%? What does that mean?

All I know is that here in the Netherlands, the prices they're mentioning are normal.

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

#533
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money supply gets brought up in every single discussion around inflation on this forum, and it’s obviously relevant. However inflation!= growth in the money supply. A lot of the reasoning behind that growth was because inflation was persistently below the 2% target for the entire period up until 2021. That’s two decades of stubbornly low inflation, despite the feds best efforts in juicing the money supply. It’s m…

It's called the Cantillon Effect. And there usually is a delay from implementation to experienced effect. After 2020 the money printing was excessive, and it almost immediately lead to unprecedented growth in the stock market. Now, however, the delayed effect of that party is leading to unprecedented growth in food and energy prices, which affects the lives of everyone.

Correct, however parent comment wasn’t referring solely to 2020, they explicitly went back to 2000. Hence why I spoke to the whole period in my comment.

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

#534
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so convoluted. Just tax the rich (companies) properly. The resources and money is available. The current government chooses not to allocate it properly. What is happening in the UK is to me 100% the result of the current Conservative Party and their policies.

Tax the rich and they go somewhere else (see recent discussions about the wealth tax in France)

> Tax the rich and they go somewhere else (see recent discussions about the wealth tax in France)

Let them go, then, the earlier the better and threat them as pariah. What good do you expect to gain from them at that rate?

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

#535
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…

> riots

Cmon..I'm a brit too. I haven't seen riots. It's dangerous comment from you.

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

#536
post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nixon's economic measures were a disaster that led to inflation and crisis. You can see that directly in your link btw.

That was not my point, but thanks for pointing out a paragraph in the source that I provided. I do notice a few 'citations needed' in the relevant clauses. Even so, if Nixon's policies resulted in failure that's not a reason for politicians today to just throw their hands in the air and declare that nothing can be done politically because "market dictates".

Well, if the one measure you point out as what the government could do today led to worse outcomes, then I do think they should abstain from that kind of interference in the future. I don't think price controls have worked anywhere.

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

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money supply gets brought up in every single discussion around inflation on this forum, and it’s obviously relevant. However inflation!= growth in the money supply. A lot of the reasoning behind that growth was because inflation was persistently below the 2% target for the entire period up until 2021. That’s two decades of stubbornly low inflation, despite the feds best efforts in juicing the money supply. It’s m…

What is consistently lost in the M2 supply talking point is the demand aspect of currency. One of the reasons why the M2 supply increasing wouldn't directly correlate to inflation has to do with global demand to hold the asset in reserve. So the argument I don't think is bad, just misguided in the sense that once the global demand for currency reserve is saturated the party is over for increase in supply with out a v…

It is absolutely relevant, and I’d be fine with the discussion of if included your level of nuance.

However it usually is a more simplistic conversation that glosses over the challenges of actually making policy at the fed.

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

#538
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…

> a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 What on earth are you eating? From where? The average 800g loaf costs £1.36. But to feed into your point about who suffers, if you had to give up your luxury loaf, you could still afford two average loaves in its place. People who could only afford a 80p loaf before are now going without.

A 1kg wholewheat sourdough loaf. I'm a bit picky regarding bread and have actually started making my own in the last few months due, in part, to A) rising prices, B) manufacturer corner-cutting, and C) it's fun!

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuter... You do not get it. This inflation is due to insiders (central bankers) printing money. Covid & ukraine are convenient excuses. Look up where this money ended up.

Unless people who can afford it are hoarding groceries an increasing monetary base shouldn't be affecting grocery prices. Only a decrease in supply versus demand, or increase costs of production, should be increasing grocery prices, if market manipulations aren't happening.

It doesn't have to be groceries that they're buying. Factories in China producing non-essential consumer goods run off the same natural gas supplies that could otherwise be used to make fertiliser. Jets taking tourists on vacations run on basically the same fuel that could go into farmers' tractors or lorries transporting food to stores. More money allowing people to make more non-essential purchases impacts food supply if the global economy and global fossil fuel supply don't have the capacity to produce that stuff, and it turns out they didn't.

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

#540
the way inflation is measured I think is accurate for a certain type of economic measurements, but it's not the intuition that consumers have about inflation. It's a moving average to ask "prices this month are what percent over what they were this month a year ago?"

because if prices shot up 20% last July, and then stopped going up August and onward, the measure is going to say that inflation this month is still at 20% over last year, but consumers have already got used to the new price level in the shops. At the same time, Joe Average is likely to be ready to grumble about prices all the time, so hearing that inflation is still at 20% will reinforce a sense that isn't really accurate.

I'm not saying economists are not measuring the right things, I'm saying that the way the stories are played in the press requires some digging or interpretation.

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