INFLATION RATE

If you ask the government what the inflation rate is they will tell you it’s 3.4 percent. Of course food and energy prices are not included in the calculations and anyone who actually goes to a grocery store after filling up their tank could have told you that. I spent fifty years in the printing industry before retiring and then reentering the workforce in retail.

I spend everyday checking out those making purchases. I see the struggles of people trying to make purchases for essentials while counting out coins hoping to have enough to make the purchase. Food prices and energy pieces are connected and I will explain.

Buying habits have changed over the last few years with more concentration going to convenience foods that can be taken from the freezer and put directly into the microwave. To meet that consumer demand stores who sell food had added additional freezers and coolers. These additional refrigeration units have added to their already growing energy bills, which of course has to be passed to consumers.

Petroleum prices have an additional effect on prices in the form of packaging. Plastics and other synthetics are produced from petroleum and every petroleum price increase affects the prices of every plastic bottle, bag and blister pack. When that is added to an increase in shoplifting, which is at its highest level ever you have an overall increase in prices. .

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Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M

In the UK retail pricing, especially that for food, has several contributory factors.

1. The rising price of fuel.
2. The fact two successive harvests have been affected by poor weather.
3. War in Ukraine. Where many grain exports come to Europe from.
4. Restrictions and tarrif changes from the EU into the UK and the added associated costs.
5. Profiteering from many businesses eager to make up for losses either from covid when stores were closed. Or taking advantage of increases in gas; electricity and local council taxation to ensure they have a profit margin that ensures the business survives.

anythingoes477 · M

@Picklebobble2 The point Americans SHOULD take from your post..... the inflation you descrube in the UK is not just because of Biden. Inflation is global....and truth be known inflation in the U.S. is the lowest on the planet. Ditto for price gouging by the manufacturers of everything.

And as long as consumers keep paying stupid prices....corporations will keep charging them.....and raising them. Gouging only goes on when the public just keeps buying no matter the price. When the public starts saying hell non im not paying that anymore......THEN manufacturers drop prices.

The creator of inflation is the public. If we didn't keep buying things no matter how much the manufacturers increases their prices ....inflation would have stopped long ago.

Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M

@anythingoes477 Absolutely !
The UK circumstances are slightly different but not unique !
Same goes for the U.S.
Everyone stressed by exactly the same issue.

It's election season for both the U.S. and UK and sadly those with no care or understanding for anything other than wanting a seat at the top table, are pushing this "It's the other guys fault !"

Politics has failed us both

Reason10 · 70-79, M

@anythingoes477 @anythingoes477 That is an uneducated LIE,and one the BideNazis have been telling to justify Unelected Joe's RECORD WORST ECONOMY IN HISTORY. There is no such thing as a global inflation because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL CURRENCY. (Even the Eurotrash couldn't pull that off, not with movements like Brexit underway.)

INFLATION IS A MONETARY PROBLEM. It is TOO MANY DOLLARS CHASING TOO FEW GOODS. It is excessive government SPENDING which floods the M1 markets,making the value and purchasing power of the dollar lower and lower

https://mises.org/mises-daily/defining-inflation
Similarly, the essence of inflation is not a general rise in prices but an increase in the supply of money, which in turns sets in motion a general increase in the prices of goods and services.

https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/heritage-explains/the-real-story-behind-inflation
Milton Friedman famously said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

From the greatest economists of all time. The truth.

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