It was inevitable. Whole chickens now cost €7.99/kg, up from €1.99/kg last year. Eggplants are priced at €3.99/kg, compared to €0.99/kg previously. Even basic apples now cost €2.99/kg, up from €0.99/kg. The cause of this increase is not due to war, but rather it is a result of pure speculation driven by greed.
Here in the UK you could by a (cheap) whole chicken for £3 until recently, would be at least 1.5kg. Now a basic chicken is £3.66 at tesco for a 1.2kg chicken
But likely the supermarket won't actually have many of these and the only choice will be the 'middle' price chicken for £6
That's not how speculation works. Speculation is buying an asset and holding onto it based on the hope that prices will rise, then selling. No one is hoarding a huge supply of whole chickens and eggplants in a warehouse somewhere. There may be some speculation happening with commodity grains because they can be stored for a while. But meat and fresh produce spoil quickly, and cold storage is expensive.
As for greed, people were just as greedy a couple years ago. So that's not a plausible explanation.
Not my experience in France. I see some price increases, but nothing outrageous. And €7.99/kg for whole chicken was last year's price in my area (near Paris).
Headline should in fact read: "In supermarkets across Europe, corporate greed is leading to a surge in food theft."
And that theft is entirely justifiable as these corporate grocery chains are effectively stealing from all of us with this greed disguised as inflation bullshit.
I can't dictate policy to foreign nations but I can lament my own countries inane policies on these issues.
Regarding the coof: No need to go all Papers Please and ban people from working, fine and arrest people traveling more than 1km from home, or repress morally justified protest over those actions. It was the most horrendous expansion of government power I've seen, probably since the patriot act.
Regarding russia: No need to harm energy markets more than war normally does with embargoes and destruction of infrastructure. No need to deplete local stockpiles by giving them away to foreign civilians rather than your own. No need steal people's money to give away.
> Whenever socialist policies, in this case the central planning of credit and interest
You are conflating centralization with socialism. Mario Draghi is the centralist banker behind QE and he is a fervent neoliberal. He has nothing to do with socialism.
> This is the Soviet Union playbook to a T, except they would always blame "wreckers" or reactionaries.
Crazy how distracted I've been lately, I've lived in a communist economy without noticing. I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.
Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.
I strongly disagree that QE policies and central banking are socialist. In fact, I would argue that QE, as it has been enacted since its inception after the collapse of Japan’s credit bubble, is closer to the opposite since it strengthens capital’s control over labour. The mechanisms of which are asset price inflation, financialization, austerity which reduces spending on public goods, poor wage growth, and so on. These are all examples of capital increasing its power while labour loses power. I agree the policy choice is terrible, but I don’t see how they can be construed as socialist.
Also, keep in mind that the theoreticial justifications for these policies do not originate in socialist/marxist economics. Nor are the technocrats that implement them motivated by socialist theory.
It seems the only connection that exist is that central banking is central (so is the military) and that marxist-leninist regimes make heavy use of centralism. Central banking predates all such regimes, by the way. But that seems like a superficial connection that does nothing to elucidate. I disagree heavily with QE but labeling it socialist does not help in understanding it so that I may effectively oppose it.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” -Anatole France
This from a lousy novel about the impossibility of divorce. The phrase you're uttering is from a flighty aristocrat who in the novel sees virtue in poverty. Perhaps in stead of pithy phrases we could engage with the topic at hand?
Not sure such a thing is possible with the scale and technology of modern society. Instead what I think you’ll see is increasing civil disobedience slowly clawing its way up the class ladder until we either have sufficiently freaked out elites to backpedal on some of these policies, or we go full cyberpunk.
Had to start a revolution when the ruling class has ensured that every small town police department is equipped to the teeth with military equipment and everyone is under 24/7 surveillance. The French didn't have this problem in 1789.
Wouldn’t the armories of those small police departments then be where such revolutions would begin springing up, either with or without the support of the small town police?
Why do you think it’s the “small/medium businesses and farmers” that anyone is claiming is responsible for the gouging? And not the large food megacorps that dominate low cost foods?
There are so many assumption baked into your comment and most of them, I would say, don't hold up.
Let's start with the biggest one which is that measures (let's say regulations) aimed at A (let's say megacorps) have their intended effect on A and most significantly on A.
In reality, the most influential and profitable companies will always have an easier way through whatever you throw at the sector then smaller, less profitable companies. The megacorps may even welcome / shape the regulation such that it harms their competitors that don't happen to have 30 lawyers on the payroll anyways.
Impressive of them to execute a plan piece by piece for 15 years, keeping it secret, sticking through the ups and downs, never giving in. For all that persistent scheming, they deserve the fruits of their malfeasence.
I didn't say anything about a conspiracy or even forethought. It's simple incentives and power dynamics. Imagine Lagarde or Powell saying "oops, we shouldn't have printed a gazillion billion dollars, after all so please fire me and Paul Krugman and all the other state-aligned Neo-Keynesians and put Peter Schiff in charge to dismantle the ECB/FED and replace it with free market money". Absurd. Much easier to opportunistically try to pivot this into more state control on the back of inflamed public opinion.
Getting “gecontroleerd” in the self-checkout supermarkets in the Netherlands seems to be happening to me way more frequently than it ever did previously (sometimes every visit). I’ve never missed scanning an item, which is something as far as I understand used to be a flag for more frequent checks.
After you scan all your items and click to pay, you get a “random” check notification and can’t pay until one of the employees comes over and scans a certain number of items in your bag.
It’s pretty frustrating and it used to happen quite infrequently.
Less energy available -> less goods produced -> goods and resources diverted from civil to military production -> supply can't keep up with demand -> prices raise -> inflation
Raising the interest rates is just dumping the issue on the people in order to keep demand in check.
Did I get this completely wrong or does it make sense? (unironically asking)
Feels to me like this is largely a consequence of the geopolitical situation + rampant speculation on the markets. The financial autocrats already decided that we are the ones who are going to take the hit.
Not disagreeing with your sequence of events, as reduced energy production and wars do send prices higher. But, there's another sequence to consider that I think is simultaneously happening:
economic production makes a widget representing 100,000th of overall economy > prices set based on 100,000th of all money in existence > the banking system quadruples existing money in the system > the widget's price (eventually) quadruples as people realize there's a ton more money chasing the same number if goods.
And, at least according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank's numbers, the US Dollar money supply has increased some 13x since the 2008 financial crises, and 5x since the beginning of 2020. Ballooning the world's reserve currency like that will have disastrous inflationary effects /at some point/. The fact its happening now, while tragic, seems wholely foreseeable.
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[ 146 ms ] story [ 2202 ms ] threadWhere did you buy a whole chicken last year for €1.99/kg?
But likely the supermarket won't actually have many of these and the only choice will be the 'middle' price chicken for £6
As for greed, people were just as greedy a couple years ago. So that's not a plausible explanation.
And that theft is entirely justifiable as these corporate grocery chains are effectively stealing from all of us with this greed disguised as inflation bullshit.
This article lays out arguments for and against this theory:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/business/economy/price-go...
Government meddling in the market though lockdowns, embargoes, and other limiting of supplies.
The Russian government invading a sovereign country didn’t help either.
Regarding the coof: No need to go all Papers Please and ban people from working, fine and arrest people traveling more than 1km from home, or repress morally justified protest over those actions. It was the most horrendous expansion of government power I've seen, probably since the patriot act.
Regarding russia: No need to harm energy markets more than war normally does with embargoes and destruction of infrastructure. No need to deplete local stockpiles by giving them away to foreign civilians rather than your own. No need steal people's money to give away.
You are conflating centralization with socialism. Mario Draghi is the centralist banker behind QE and he is a fervent neoliberal. He has nothing to do with socialism.
> This is the Soviet Union playbook to a T, except they would always blame "wreckers" or reactionaries.
Crazy how distracted I've been lately, I've lived in a communist economy without noticing. I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.
Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.
Also, keep in mind that the theoreticial justifications for these policies do not originate in socialist/marxist economics. Nor are the technocrats that implement them motivated by socialist theory.
It seems the only connection that exist is that central banking is central (so is the military) and that marxist-leninist regimes make heavy use of centralism. Central banking predates all such regimes, by the way. But that seems like a superficial connection that does nothing to elucidate. I disagree heavily with QE but labeling it socialist does not help in understanding it so that I may effectively oppose it.
pantries and welfare exists. stealing is not necessary. most of these sort of people cant cook well and resort to packaged bs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ecb/ec...
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/money-printing-and-inflation...
That's what happens when you push people too far.
Let's start with the biggest one which is that measures (let's say regulations) aimed at A (let's say megacorps) have their intended effect on A and most significantly on A.
In reality, the most influential and profitable companies will always have an easier way through whatever you throw at the sector then smaller, less profitable companies. The megacorps may even welcome / shape the regulation such that it harms their competitors that don't happen to have 30 lawyers on the payroll anyways.
Inflation likely started like a bank run, except instead of deposits, it was money being directly given to plebs.
This, among other issues likely started the inflation. As you note, this brrrrr machine had been running for over a decade.
Don't ascribe to delusional conspiracy what's easily explained by collective corporate greed.
It’s pretty frustrating and it used to happen quite infrequently.
Raising the interest rates is just dumping the issue on the people in order to keep demand in check.
Did I get this completely wrong or does it make sense? (unironically asking)
Feels to me like this is largely a consequence of the geopolitical situation + rampant speculation on the markets. The financial autocrats already decided that we are the ones who are going to take the hit.
economic production makes a widget representing 100,000th of overall economy > prices set based on 100,000th of all money in existence > the banking system quadruples existing money in the system > the widget's price (eventually) quadruples as people realize there's a ton more money chasing the same number if goods.
And, at least according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank's numbers, the US Dollar money supply has increased some 13x since the 2008 financial crises, and 5x since the beginning of 2020. Ballooning the world's reserve currency like that will have disastrous inflationary effects /at some point/. The fact its happening now, while tragic, seems wholely foreseeable.
https://www.la-croix.com/France/Inflation-vraiment-hausse-vo...