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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

#581

Post by bombcar »

WalterBright wrote: post #480
jll29 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity reates in the US, from my observation, are a compound effect of the unavailability of affordable, healthy ingredients (fruits, vegetables) and cultural factors (a custom of never cooking healthy meals, for instance rice and vegetables, instead of consuming carb-heavy burgers and sugary milk shakes and coke at fast food outlets). Friends in the US drove school buses during the day and worked at Wendy's at nigh…

> unavailability of affordable, healthy ingredients I hear that a lot, and it simply isn't true. A bag of apples is cheap, so is a bag of beans, a bag of rice, a bag of potatoes, etc. Some of the cheapest foods in the supermarket are an ordinary can of beans. Milk is cheap, too.

The truth in the lie is that the availability of easy to eat and healthy quantities of food is lower than it could be, and Americans love convenience.

It is possible to lose weight eating only at McDonald's but it takes effort.

The fact that Americans drink about 40 gallons of soda a year on average HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING GO AWAY.

(I'd love to do the math if all caloric sodas in the USA had corn syrup removed and fake sugars added what the result would be)

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

#582

Post by Lio »

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…

> A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or not, a weapon wielded by the rich against the middle and lower classes.

I believe that Andrew Bailey, the current Governor of the Bank of England, was criticised for exactly that last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/04/bank-of-eng...

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

#583

Post by Rury »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #414
cs702 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an inflationary economy, the winners are rich who have valuable assets whose value skyrocket - think real estate, businesses, etc. Actually, it's the opposite that is happening, because central banks have aggressively raised interest rates to bring inflation under control. When rates rise, the net present value of every long-term cash-earning asset declines, and those individuals and businesses (including banks)…

Isn't the problem with raising interest rates that the rich with savings have assets that improve and the poor with debts have loans that get worse?

Rising interest rates make debts worse and asset values (including those belonging to the rich) to decrease, whereas it's mostly just the value of money which improves.

Also, who is rich/poor and has assets/debts can be hard to tell from appearances alone. Would you call this guy poor [0]? Seems like he has a good life. Which begs the question... when we talk about taxing the rich, who are we thinking of exactly? Someone living beyond their means, or below their means?

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HX4a5P8eE

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

#584

Post by virgildotcodes »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #454
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 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…

We avoid inflation by taxing the wealthy and redistributing that to the lower socioeconomic classes.

Global ecosystems are already in a free fall, we don’t need to “encourage production” [by deregulating industries? perhaps getting rid of those pesky environmental and worker protections? (that’ll definitely help out those workers) ] and even more rapid resource consumption.

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

#585

Post by bombcar »

WalterBright wrote: post #483
jbstack wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They could eat less, though, and would be healthier for it.

It's likely possible that the lack of self-control that is sometimes related to overeating correlates with lack of self-control in other areas such as saving money or avoiding debt.

But that's not popular to talk about; nobody likes hearing about personal responsibility anymore.

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

#586

Post by concordDance »

ddren wrote: post #520
Nifty3929 wrote: post #454

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…

[flagged]

I'm not sure you really get how markets work. Price controls can have a few different effects depending on the good in question, but one of those is shortages, which can be really bad when the good is food.

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

#587

Post by HPsquared »

colossal wrote: post #312
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

well it still is delivered by guys with swords in a sense -- now they're just guys with guns and jumpsuits bearing the words "US ARMY."

More like, "IRS". Taxation is the demand for the currency. Even if you conduct all trade with other people in seashells (or whatever), you'd still need to obtain dollars to pay your taxes.

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

#588

Post by concordDance »

jhallenworld wrote: post #572
ddren wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The rises are due to a power dynamic: the companies raising the prices can basically get away with it ("whatever the market will bear"). Why can they do this? One reason is monopoly power- monopolies must be broken up. But what else can be done (besides central bank driven demand destruction)? So instead of price controls, a more palatable solution is collective buying. This gives buyers more clout, allows them to ba…

The question is, why do they have a monopoly?

(Well, the actual question is DO they have a monopoly, to which the answer is mostly no)

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

#589

Post by JustSomeNobody »

glerk wrote: post #251
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #95

It is not inflation. It is price gouging.

The price of anything is what the market is willing to pay for it. If you are going to buy a carton of milk at $5, why would I sell it for $4?

The alternative is me not buying food.

Hmm...

Yeah, okay, whatever.

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

#590

Post by theturtletalks »

NalNezumi wrote: post #576
Nifty3929 wrote: post #454

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…

This seems to come from the same place as the argument of "trickle down economics". Yea no, I've seen similar things done in Japan with abenomics (with one of the targeted goal even being more inflation; without achieving it) and studies show it doesn't work. Those spending never reaches the "lower classes", and seldom even reach places where it would have the potential to increase productivity. It's a tired, old arg…

His argument is that the government can do 2 things:

1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices

2. Free money straight to the people which means more money in the market and thus, inflation, empty shelves, etc.

His general point is that having interest-free money keeps existing players honest since newcomers can come in and start a competing business. Now that the money is drying up, existing players are increasing their moat.

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