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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

#591

Post by birdyrooster »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #289
tacker2000 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a good case to be made that Putin was the richest man in the world. Nobody's sure what he's worth, but it's quite likely it was more than the $200B Arnault has. And Putin is singularly responsible for a good chunk of the inflation. So blaming it on the rich might be appropriate, but not in the way that it's usually meant.

No sure why you are being down voted but the global recession and inflation is the result of Vladimir Putin's choices and virtually no one else.

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

#592

Post by tootie »

bombcar wrote: post #571
tootie wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to veer off into the psychology of it, but there's just such an overwhelming desire by most people to place blame for any misfortune on some intentional human behavior.

It's the root of conspiracy theories - it's much easier and nicer to think there's some cartoon villain somewhere making your life miserable; it's much harder to admit that the world is just annoying and painful. Also with a "big evil" you can tell yourself that removing that evil would solve everything.

A lot of times, the villainy is really the collective self-interest of thousand of people in a supply chain or open market. No one is going to willingly pay more or sell for less than they can get at any step of the way.

I use housing as a good example since it's been a major driver of inflation and most houses are sold peer to peer on the open market. If you're selling your house and you see comparable houses selling for $900K, but you only need $750K to earn enough profit to buy your next house, what are you going to do? Sell for the lowest price you can afford? Or sell for the highest price you can get? You'd sell for the highest price. And that same calculation gets played out at every level of every transaction in every corner of the global marketplace. Yet nobody would think of themselves as being a villain for doing it. Or be accused of gouging.

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

#593

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#594

Post by oatmeal1 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

> I wonder if inequality increases caused by printing trillions of dollars during COVID are anything to do with this inflation? Could it be that making the rich endless more wealthy and increasing asset prices is bad for society?

Making billionaires more wealthy doesn't affect inflation much because they are already consuming as much as they want. That money will just increase the price of stocks and bonds - whatever billionaires invest in.

Giving every average Joe a thousand more dollars will increase spending by nearly that amount per person and prices of goods will increase.

Giving money to people who need money is part of the solution, but the biggest part of the solution is making sure human productivity (GDP) is going to make things that make people's lives better.

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

#595

Post by henry2023 »

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 already produce enough. It’s the distribution of what has been produced the core issue.

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

#596

Post by bombcar »

bialpio wrote: post #188
yourusername wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unilever's net profit over 2022 increased by 24.9%

It's probably better to look at the margin, I could see how the profits increased in absolute numbers as people may have switched from eating out to home-cooked food.

Margin will also help discount issues resulting from Covid; a company that lost money during Covid (think restaurant suppliers) would go to a profit when it was over, but are they making MORE margin (percentage) than they were before Covid?

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

#597

Post by whywhywhywhy »

rcarr wrote: post #330
tacker2000 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

> 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

How does printing more money to give to everyone lower inflation?

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

#598

Post by TheFattestNinja »

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.

Always worth remembering that, at least for property prices, "being down 10%" doesn't mean that 1y they were worth 100 and this year are worth 90, but that 2y ago they were worth 100, 1y ago they were worth 110, and this year they are worth 119. In other words we often talk about "the % year on year increase is down", not "the value of the house is down".

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

#599

Post by jldugger »

elevenoh4 wrote: post #338
jldugger wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuter ... Help me understand: is this a stacked chart? Why does a chart that ends in 2021 show inflation in 2022 and 2023? > This inflation is due to insiders (central bankers) printing money. If this is about the money supply, why is food more affected than other products? IMO everything is a factor, and there is no one culprit, and therefore no one easy fix.

Imagine being a rational human looking at g7 central banks adding 40% to the money supply in https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106649548-159664277043... I look forward to open source ai economic simulation tools - when you change variables like m2, you'll see what happens to inflation - and there'll be no more ambiguity For now: ask gpt-4 yourself & get a lesson

just sayin': why did inflation appear when it did? why not sooner? why not later? Why is the impact of inflation non-uniform?

We know the model pretty well: "money printer goes brrr" leads to higher prices for good and services. But the data lately doesn't make a great supporting case.

> I look forward to open source ai economic simulation tools - when you change variables like m2, you'll see what happens to inflation - and there'll be no more ambiguity

Economists have been leading the way in multifactor causal inference, but GPT in particular is not well suited to it. And macroeconomics in particular is hard to measure via natural experiment, so you're left trying to estimate counterfactuals based on a paucity of data

but look, my day job is people coming to me with timeseries data showing an engineering fuckup and debating about what caused it (usually ops vs prod). if theres a nuanced take, im all ears, but so far your fire has brought more heat than light.

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

#600

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

theturtletalks wrote: post #590
NalNezumi wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

We tried that. It all went into real estate and stocks and gave birth to a massive scam industry involving crypto and other get rich quick schemes as the world is full of stupid people and opportunists.

The average joe didn't see much trickle down to him unless he was already invested in real estate or stocks.

It was basically a wealth transfer. Housing is now about 30% more expensive than pre pandemic but take home wages are not.

Giving away free money without any strings attached to individuals or corporations is a bad idea.

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