Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

news.err.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 349 posts

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#301

Post by supertrope »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #251
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is an increase in money supply over an increase in the value of things to buy with money (or we could say the size of the economy). Money supply could increase, but if it is balanced with a growth in good supply, inflation doesn’t occur. This is why it can’t be computed directly.

That is not true, inflation is exactly when the money supply increases. It doesn’t matter what happens to “good supply”. In fact the supply of goods increases in response to a price increase. That’s why most people think a low level of inflation is healthy.

Production can overcome monetary inflation. PCs don't cost $5,000 anymore even though there's more US Dollars circulating.

Cities that gain many high earning jobs will see housing inflation even though employers do not create money. This is independent of national level monetary policy.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#302

Post by yobbo »

piva00 wrote: post #61
rawbot wrote: post #35

Doesnt' every country calculate their inflation separately? Because living in Germany, that 7% is laughable. Nothing has risen by that little of an amount. Not food, rent, petrol, etc. Well, I do know of something that has risen to less than 7%: salaries.

When I look at the Swedish numbers I feel the same and then I see that prices went down for "photography, audiovisual and computer equipment" and... Nothing else. Fuel is up 40+%, food by 8-10%, housing by 2%, electricity by 30+%. How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%?? I do need to do proper research on the models because just using my common sense it doesn't make any fucking sense...

Housing, energy (KPI-XE), and interest rates (KPIF) are excluded from the models.

Swedish households are extremely sensitive to interest rates, so there are big incentives to make the numbers smaller.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#303

Post by cs702 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #267
cs702 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally experienced inflation of greater magnitude -- in a developing country in the 1980's. It affected behavior in ways that in hindsight were very counter-productive to economic stability: Every adult person and every business simultaneously tried to spend less, earn more, and hoard more -- which is impossible in the aggregate, because every expense by one person or business is income for another person or…

Spending less and saving is exactly the opposite of what is typical in a high inflation society.

As I wrote, that's what everyone tries to do (e.g., businesses lay off employees, try to raise prices, and hoard inventory), but in the aggregate it's impossible for everyone simultaneously to cut spending, increase earnings, and hoard more stuff as the currency loses value. The sum of all individual decisions, which may seem rational to each person or business, add up to aggregate behavior that in hindsight proves counter-productive to economic stability.

As Keynes put it, "the process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." Speaking from personal experience, I think he was spot-on.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#304

Post by BurningFrog »

pydry wrote: post #204
roenxi wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can be caused by all kinds of things. In theory water can run uphill. Sometimes it even does. But as a matter of overwhelming practice it is obvious that if the general price of goods is rising it is the government doing something. Otherwise there is nearly nothing that could cause a correlated rise of the price of everything. Eg, in this case the most likely culprit is wilfully shutting down the global economy…

>In theory water can run uphill. Sometimes it even does. But as a matter of overwhelming practice it is obvious that if the general price of goods is rising it is the government doing something. Otherwise there is nearly nothing that could cause a correlated rise of the price of everything. This caused general inflation of nearly everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis There is never a perfectly…

The oil crisis coincided with US inflation, but was not the cause:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/1970s-gre...

TLDR quote:

> The Great Inflation was blamed on oil prices, currency speculators, greedy businessmen, and avaricious union leaders. However, it is clear that monetary policies that financed massive budget deficits and were supported by political leaders were the cause.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#305

Post by supertrope »

yobbo wrote: post #300
arguru wrote: post #64

Estonian here, the situation is getting quite bad indeed, particularly when it comes to petrol/energy prices, which of course has the domino effect of driving up other goods and services in the mid to long term. However, in true Estonian fashion, a lot of people (probably majority) might complain within their familily/friend circle, but will mostly just suffer through it. In fact, 10 years ago, two local comedian-act…

Read somewhere that a litre of milk in northern Europe costs around a kW/h in energy to produce. Whatever the exact number, it should open your eyes to the importance of energy prices on all other prices. It's not "just" transports.

There's one perspective that all value added in the economy is the result of energy input. De-industrialization and off shoring of heavy industry has allowed G7 countries to decrease energy/GDP ratio, but the total amount of energy consumed increases, only decreasing slightly during a recession.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#307

Post by _0w8t »

at0mic22 wrote: post #295
_0w8t wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With tall buildings an option is to drill to 300 meters or deeper, https://hvac.okstate.edu/sites/default/files/pubs/papers/201...

Thanks for the article! As I understood, drilling deep is quite expensive and, comparing to centralized heating stations working with gas for instance, the thermal output does not allow building heat factories. In example they state that they needed 8 500-meter holes for 4 houses and only 64 apts. So they are talking about typical Scandinavian 4-floor buildings, which are as well A-class insulated. It stands nowhere…

The article mentioned Akershus hospital in Norway. It is a big 6-floor building. For taller buildings deeper drilling is required, but still should possible. But I guess for really toll buildings one should focus on improving isolation as presently it may not be cost-effective just to install heat pumps.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#308

Post by supertrope »

foverzar wrote: post #79
jgilias wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you notice, the second and third place are taken by Lithuania and Latvia respectively. A lot of 'cheapness' in all kinds of sectors came from RUS/UKR/BEL somewhere upstream. Building materials being a prime example. So, a combined effect of energy prices, sanctions on RUS, a war raging in Ukraine. But then, as Estonian prime minister said recently - sure, gas is expensive, but freedom is priceless.

> gas is expensive, but freedom is priceless. Typical politicians excuse, tbh. It's not like this has any relation to actual freedoms, only bs political slogans.

Not being under Russian occupation seems like freedom to me. Although that's mostly due to NATO membership not sanctions.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#309

Post by pydry »

BurningFrog wrote: post #304
pydry wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In theory water can run uphill. Sometimes it even does. But as a matter of overwhelming practice it is obvious that if the general price of goods is rising it is the government doing something. Otherwise there is nearly nothing that could cause a correlated rise of the price of everything. This caused general inflation of nearly everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis There is never a perfectly…

The oil crisis coincided with US inflation, but was not the cause: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/1970s-gre... TLDR quote: > The Great Inflation was blamed on oil prices, currency speculators, greedy businessmen, and avaricious union leaders. However, it is clear that monetary policies that financed massive budget deficits and were supported by political leaders were the cause.

Yes, I know about Milton Friedman's quote that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. He was oh so very wrong about most things:

https://evonomics.com/the-truth-about-inflation-why-milton-f...

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#310

Post by capdeck »

dmix wrote: post #147
rjzzleep wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but the Estonian prime minister is a Eurocrat idiot that lacks basic understanding of how either military or economy work or operate. You want to be independent of Hydrocarbons and Russian commodities? Okay well the Chinese model of silently building up the capabilities to do that is one way to approach the issue. France is an even better example of the idiocy of this as France had one of the most advanced…

Historically wars (as awful as they were) often had a way of realigning politics/economic understanding with reality. The world has been so peaceful for so long that they lose sight of the fragility of success and wealth. So much of modern political history is taking the economic gains for granted and assuming they will stay consistent (or only be a minor inconvenience) despite an endless march of downward pressure o…

They say 2 generations need to pass between large wars reoccurrence on the planet. 1st generation that largely participated in the war will never do it again, whatever the cost. 2nd generation gets very strong message from 1st generation about true horrors of war, so it is much more careful. 3rd generation looses that direct connection and feedback from veterans, grandfathers, etc... so naturally they think of war as something that is minor inconvenience at best... And through the ignorance of 3rd generation - here we come. 80 years have passed since the last world war. Sadly, our time is up.
Post reply on HN