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

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

grocerygazette.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Post by lordfrito »

peresthe wrote: post #270

It is truly strange to see so many comments on Hacker News -- a message board owned by YCombinator, a startup accelerator whose actual mission is to launch wildly profitable companies -- talking conspiratorially about the wealthy being "parasites", lambasting "capitalism", pointing to increased profits as evidence of unscrupulous behavior.

Agreed...

Sometimes it feels like the site is being astroturfed with progressive / class warfare type messages.

Othertimes I feel it's just the same old "eternal september" problem but with techies, a bunch of young idealistic kids fresh out of college who tend to think in black and white terms of "us" vs "them". I remember being this way as a teenager, not quite sure when I grew out of it.

I remember listening to punk rock and advocating for "anarchy" etc (I'm sure I got the idea listening to too much Sex Pistols)... SMH... We all took ourselves and our political views sooooo seriously at that age.... Thank god no one was listening to me back then. The difference between then and now is that my conversations were in person and shared amongst a few high school kids, now they're broadcast to the world, commented on, and amplified.

The more I think about it, I'm hoping its just kids being kids.

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

#652

Post by beefield »

I'm more than a bit irritated that the inflation news push out just the annual number and do not show how the acrual CPI index has developed. As an example, euro area headline inflation has been practically zero since october [1], and yet only thing you see in the news and ECB commentaries is the YoY number scaremongering.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/consumer-price-index-...

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

#653

Post by boredhedgehog »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
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…

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…

> Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war

Do you mean the sanctions our rulers voluntarily chose to impose on that sector? Or is there something intrinsic to the war that would have that effect?

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

#654

Post by engineer_22 »

moffkalast wrote: post #642
JL-Akrasia wrote: post #623

There was 11+ Trillion injected into the economy, most of that did not got to the poor. Lets pay more attention to this cause

Are we talking worldwide there? How is that number even possible, that's like half the US's GDP and almost four times UK's.

I think parent is talking about the US COVID bills that provided liquidity to the stock market and checks to households.

Did UK also do something like that?

We are also still seeing supply chain problems here that started during COVID. Consumption didn't cease during COVID, but production did, so there is a massive backlog. Not speaking retail consumption, but industrial and government orgs also consume resources like equipment, machines, etc. And those assets are seeing persistent backlogs, especially domestic production as US is fully employed and no room to increase production.

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

#655

Post by bialpio »

apetresc wrote: post #238
bialpio wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do restaurants get their groceries from completely different supply chains than the rest of us? Sure, the distributors are different, but I'd assume it's all still Monsanto, Unilever, etc., at the end of the day anyway.

I don't know, but I would not be too surprised if local / smaller producers are a bit better represented for restaurants. In any case, profit margin should not be sensitive to this.

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

#656

Post by drewcoo »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
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…

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…

> stop this conspiracy talk about the “rich” creating inflation to disown the “poor”

You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.

- George Carlin

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

#657

Post by detaro »

peresthe wrote: post #270

It is truly strange to see so many comments on Hacker News -- a message board owned by YCombinator, a startup accelerator whose actual mission is to launch wildly profitable companies -- talking conspiratorially about the wealthy being "parasites", lambasting "capitalism", pointing to increased profits as evidence of unscrupulous behavior.

The days of HNs audience primarily being the startup turbo-capitalism crowd are looong over.

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

#658

Post by AviationAtom »

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.

Folks feast like kings when the cheap money is flowing, failing to realize that eventually the tab comes due.

It's what you're seeing happening in Silicon Valley right now.

Usually a reality check occurs every decade or so, bringing heads back down to Earth, but I think too many felt that the COVID lockdown lows in the markets were that reset. They then went right back to their old habits, after a brief pause.

Just thinking about how long it took to recover from 2000, 2008, etc., it's obvious that we didn't truly have that reset.

The lockdowns fundamentally changed a lot, but few people seem to want to acknowledge it. The effects of the lockdowns will been seen for a long time, I honestly do believe.

Just my take on it all.

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

#659

Post by wing-_-nuts »

titzer wrote: post #116
simonh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If wholesale food costs have gone up and they're simply passing that on then they may not be making any more money. Here's wholesale food prices in the US: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU578101 In fact you'd expect reduced sales from the higher prices to put pressure on profits. That is what seems to be happening in the UK: https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2023/01/31/food-companies-p... But not in the US, wher…

It's both increased wholesale food costs and price gouging. Profits have never been higher all along the board. Everyone in the chain is "passing the cost on" and also taking a little extra cut.

>Profits have never been higher all along the board. Everyone in the chain is "passing the cost on" and also taking a little extra cut.

This feels correct, but if that were the case, if companies are generating record profits, why aren't we seeing that reflected in stock prices? At the very least, why isn't price / earning ratios cratering?

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

#660

Post by moffkalast »

engineer_22 wrote: post #654
moffkalast wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we talking worldwide there? How is that number even possible, that's like half the US's GDP and almost four times UK's.

I think parent is talking about the US COVID bills that provided liquidity to the stock market and checks to households. Did UK also do something like that? We are also still seeing supply chain problems here that started during COVID. Consumption didn't cease during COVID, but production did, so there is a massive backlog. Not speaking retail consumption, but industrial and government orgs also consume resources lik…

I'm not sure how much of a point there is in treating this inflation as region-specific when the economy is clearly globalized to the point where anything affects everything and most countries are also seeing it.

The UK made its own relief checks, as did all EU countries afaik, but to a much smaller degree than the US. Some only to students or as free meal/vacation vouchers.

Post reply on HN