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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

#821

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…

>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. Completely inaccurate. Giving people money that came from taxes does not increase the money supply. Giving people money that came from selling bonds does not increase the money supply. Only printing money increases the money supply.

Printing Money == Borrowing Money in our modern banking systems. And borrowing is often exactly how this gets funded.

Also, it's not just about the money supply. It's about who has the money and what they do with it.

Taking money from a rich person who might have had it tied up in stock, and giving it to a poor person who takes it to the grocery store - will not put anything more on the shelves in that grocery store. In the aggregate, it MUST do one of those three things. It may ALSO decrease the price of stock as it's sold by the rich people.

Clearly the economy is complicated, and it's hard to follow around the money. That's why I like to get back to fundamentals. Not even economics, but basically physics: We can't consume what isn't produced. Money is to some degree beside the point. If we want people (of any class) to have more stuff, then we must allow for that stuff to be produced.

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

#822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is primarily caused by governments increasing the supply of money: https://www.hoover.org/research/inflation-true-and-false . Inflation was fixed in the U.S. when Reagan became president: https://www.pacificresearch.org/beating-back-inflation-team-... Recent studies in fact show that wages and productivity are still linked: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3.... And, finally other a…

You're quoting the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. These are the orgs who persistently try to sell trickle-down economics, minimal taxation, low regulation, and other discredited, disastrous, and irrational neoliberal policy arguments. Many are also enthusiastic climate change denialists.

You forgot to say they are racists and nazis.

How about giving some arguments?

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

#823
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…

Amazing that you were able to bring class divide that inflation fosters without mentioning the major responsible for it: the government and central banks. In fact, inflation is, in its current form, a tax levied by the government on all citizens--rich and poor. You are correct that the rich can find ways to hedge some of the effects of inflation, but that's expected as the rich have way more disposable income. I just…

Don't think the UK government can do much about it, the inflation is driven by USA rising interest rates which devalues the pound

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

#824
post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There has been a complete and confusing lack of deregulation talk in the inflation discussion and I don’t know why. Your example could also be taken with housing - why is construction not deregulated in smart ways to jump start residential building? Building a house is a total red tape disaster.

HOAs are even worse than county & state governments when it comes to building a house. Many HOAs have building codes which include a minimum square footage. Some HOA regulations require over a 1000 sq ft livable footprint (garages don't count). The problem is HOAs have an incentive to raise property value, which makes it far more expensive for people to build a home to live in. HOAs are incentivized to increase property value of the neighborhood & large houses increase property value.

Small plots of land are dominated by HOAs. Finding small plots of "unregulated" (no HOA) land often requires one to live very far from a city & decent grocery stores.

I'm not a big fan of the red tape of regulation & how regulations can be abused by large capital, but in the case of housing, HOAs are a bigger problem. Of course, there are also municipal regulations which require small plots of land to be more tightly regulated re: housing.

A solution is to improve house design which can be modularly expanded as one gains more wealth. That way, a family can start small & gradually build additions or attach additional modules as time goes on.

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

#825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Being rich is always better than being poor no matter what the economic context is. Even Marxists should be able to understand that. Although, to be precise: Inflation hurts everybody maintaining their savings in some form of cash. Rich people with a large pile of cash also have a lot to lose. In the medium term current retail prices will be offset by wage increases as long as inflation does not become a gal…

In fact, Marxists understand this point most of all. Which is why the moral impetus is to remove the possibility of being individually rich, in order to bring a more beautiful wealth to all. Individual "wealth" is so boring and flat and uninspired. Just Scrooge McDucks everywhere. Doesn't it feel like an archaic concept at this point? Such a narrow instantiation of humanity, can't die soon enough.

I dunno. I'm kinda enjoying the billionaire space race. Some of those McDucks moved us off of 60+ year old launch systems for funzies.

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

#826
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty lazy narrative. Prices are rising even in non-branded goods and markets. Smaller retailers are not-undercutting the bigger retailers. Couscous and margarine and eggs being more expensive across the board at the supplier level. This does not speak to any sort of cartel behavior.

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 always the case. Someone, somewhere, is taking the opportunity to put prices up. It might be in some cases that it's triggered by a shortage, but they're still putting prices up because they can.

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

#827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing that you were able to bring class divide that inflation fosters without mentioning the major responsible for it: the government and central banks. In fact, inflation is, in its current form, a tax levied by the government on all citizens--rich and poor. You are correct that the rich can find ways to hedge some of the effects of inflation, but that's expected as the rich have way more disposable income. I just…

Don't think the UK government can do much about it, the inflation is driven by USA rising interest rates which devalues the pound

Pretending the UK did not intentionally decide to leave the EU, among other choices it has made, did not impact food prices is what it is.

Related Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+brexit+impact+uk+food+pr...

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

#828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The gap between living standard of poor and rich is much smaller than a few hundred years ago. What you claim cannot possibly be correct.

A few hundred years ago, the vast majority of people lived under Autocracies.

The elite could simply dictate how societies would operate.

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

#829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 remove…

Hmm. Napkin math assuming its 40 gallons of sugared soda at a reasonable 20g per 8oz serving is 640 servings, 12800g of sugar, 51200 calories, or 14.6 lbs of empty nutrients on average a year if it all got replaced by calorie-free sweetener.

How much is 40 gallons? 426 12 oz cans of soda, 35.5 dozen cans, or 256 20oz bottles of soda.

I wonder if the bad quality of the majority of tap water has an effect on soda consumption. How much less soda would we drink if every residence had on-site water filtration?

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

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think the UK government can do much about it, the inflation is driven by USA rising interest rates which devalues the pound

Pretending the UK did not intentionally decide to leave the EU, among other choices it has made, did not impact food prices is what it is. Related Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+brexit+impact+uk+food+pr...

France and Germany are also experiencing food inflation in double digits, surely you can't just blame Brexit as the big factor
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