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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

#681

Post by prewett »

ambicapter wrote: post #645
prox wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What is the negative outcome of this?

Have you ever been employed by someone poor? (And I don't mean a middle manager spending someone else' money)

The rich have historically funded the arts (e.g. patronage), public buildings, public institutions (e.g. Carnegie's libraries).

Useful businesses that require high capital are difficult to get going if no one has any capital.

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

#682

Post by mjevans »

somenameforme wrote: post #662
theturtletalks wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US has had extremely low interest rates for a very long time, and yet effective competition is further than ever in many industries. Something I'd observe is how unreasonably difficult it can be to legally sell things in the US. For instance hitting on this topic (of food prices), why can't I simply start baking bread and selling it? You can make an amazing loaf of bread for a tiny fraction of what people pay in…

Safety, including healthcode safety, is a good thing. A level playing field ensures that everyone in the market is making safe, hopefully good quality, products for that market. Reviewing, streamlining, and creating easier for small businesses to follow guidelines about the regulations that exist in a given field also sounds like good ways of improving consumer choice and safety.

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

#683

Post by G3rn0ti »

bakugo wrote: post #667
G3rn0ti wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation means price increases across all actors in an economy. Large corporations also have to pay higher production costs now. So all these „profits“ are eaten up by the price increases those corporations see, too. I don’t think you have a valid understanding of what a „profit“ really is…

> So all these „profits“ are eaten up by the price increases those corporations see, too. I don’t think you have a valid understanding of what a „profit“ really is… Uh, you should google what the word "profit" means. You're thinking of "revenue".

Er, nope. You are mixing it up, I am sorry. Profit = revenue minus all expenses. So if prices are rising, revenue grows but profit stays the same as expenses are driven up too by inflated prices of the factors of production.

But it’s a typical observation I have whenever discussing economics with Europeans — economic illiteracy is rampant, here, unfortunately, because schools do not give much priority to basic economic facts.

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

#684

Post by random_upvoter »

epups wrote: post #536
random_upvoter wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what's the plan now? Let this thing run its course until there are food riots in the USA?

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

#685

Post by Bukhmanizer »

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…

I just want to point out that pretty much every natural economic condition is beneficial for the rich. The thing about money is it’s very flexible. You can hoard it in deflationary cycles, spend it on assets in inflationary cycles, grow it in economically good times and buy cheap property and goods in economically bad times.

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

#686

Post by cortesoft »

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]

People don’t decide to raise prices out of the blue… it isn’t quite this simple, but for the purpose of understanding the basic concept, you can think of it as the price goes up when you can easily sell your inventory at the current price… if your product sells out quickly, and you still have people eager to buy your product, you raise prices, and you keep raising them until you can just barely sell all your product (of course it is more complicated, because you are trying to maximize profit and not minimize inventory, but the basic idea is the same)

If you fix prices, it just means the product keeps selling out quickly and most people can’t get the product.

This is why prices go up when there is a supply shock (like with eggs and the bird flu). There are fewer eggs available, and raising prices reduces demand until it matches the supply (as people who only kinda like eggs switch to cheaper alternatives). While it sucks that eggs are more expensive, at least you can still buy them if you really like eggs. With price controls, it becomes a crapshoot on whether you can get them or not.

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

#687

Post by rcarr »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #597
rcarr wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I didn't say there was an either or did I? But the US approach is definitely preferable to giving the most amount of public money to the people who already have the most. Larger sums of money should have been given to the poor with it tapering off gradually as income levels increased. Instead it was given out in the complete opposite way, with people at the top getting the most and those at the bottom getting the least. The pandemic could have been the perfect opportunity for a soft debt jubilee to rebalance the system. Instead, it was just another thing yet again exploited for the benefit of the 1%.

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

#688

Post by foldr »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #674
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…

[flagged]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick. We're in this mess because of Thatcher, Reagan and TINA. Almost everyone now believes in capitalism in the same way that medieval peasants believed in the feudal system. That is, while they don't necessarily like it, they see no viable alternative.

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

#689

Post by auggierose »

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…

At some point AI will produce stuff for us. It is just a matter of time until AI can do the basics: grow food, build houses, operate people, etc. I mean, that is what technology was always for: making life better. So clearly there cannot be a correlation between how much you produce, and how much you consume.

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

#690

Post by CydeWeys »

hnburnsy wrote: post #518
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…

Why does Brexit have to equal "increased bureaucracy at the border"? Is it due to the lifelong bureaucrats that loves enforcing it? An effective government should do everything in its power to reduce the bureaucracy in extraordinary times.

There's two sides to every trading relationship. Even if the UK tries to reduce bureaucracy on their side, there's still all the bureaucracy on the side of the other countries they're trading with. And they literally just torpedoed all their trade relationships by leaving a large customs union that allowed them to trade with a large number of important partners with significantly reduced bureaucracy.

I agree with you that bureaucracy here is the problem, and Brexit was the cause of it.

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