[biz-engineer]

Strange. While looking at prices for holiday trips, I realize some prices have sky-rocketed compared to the prices I was used to pay before 2020, not the prices of cameras per se, but the prices of transport services. Now, I just check the year-on-year monthly inflation records for Euro zone, and it looks like inflation rates tripled from January to June, the strongest increase of inflation being for the energies (up to 13% increase) . Are you seeing the same thing happening?

---------- Post added 29-07-21 at 10:06 ----------

Measuring inflation - HICP

Transport: +6%
Housing: +3.7%

[slartibartfast01]

Strange. While looking at prices for holiday trips, I realize some prices have sky-rocketed compared to the prices I was used to pay before 2020, not the prices of cameras per se, but the prices of transport services. Now, I just check the year-on-year monthly inflation records for Euro zone, and it looks like inflation rates tripled from January to June, the strongest increase of inflation being for the energies (up to 13% increase) . Are you seeing the same thing happening?

---------- Post added 29-07-21 at 10:06 ----------

Measuring inflation - HICP

Transport: +6%
Housing: +3.7%

They are desperate to recoup losses over the last 18 months. Of course higher prices mean fewer travellers and fewer travellers mean even higher prices, a bit like Pentax cameras

[Serkevan]

Strange. While looking at prices for holiday trips, I realize some prices have sky-rocketed compared to the prices I was used to pay before 2020, not the prices of cameras per se, but the prices of transport services. Now, I just check the year-on-year monthly inflation records for Euro zone, and it looks like inflation rates tripled from January to June, the strongest increase of inflation being for the energies (up to 13% increase) . Are you seeing the same thing happening?

---------- Post added 29-07-21 at 10:06 ----------

Measuring inflation - HICP

Transport: +6%
Housing: +3.7%

I'm actually worried that the system deficiencies exposed during Covid, coupled with a lot of money printing, are going to lead us right back into another crash soon. Let's see.

[timb64]

With all the borrowing the UK Government has done I just worry that the younger generation are going to be picking up the tab for decades to come.It’s not that long ago we finished paying off the debt to the USA for WWII!

(Economics not politics!)

---

Last edited by timb64; 07-29-2021 at 03:23 AM.

[Rondec]

The US definitely has high rates of inflation right now. U.S. Inflation Is Highest in 13 Years as Prices Surge 5% - WSJ I'm not totally sure all of the reasons why. Certainly fuel costs have jumped up here -- people weren't traveling as much last year at this time and now they are again. But builders that I know have told me that that their cost for boards and other materials for building homes have doubled since last year.

Maybe some of it is simply that people put off a bunch of activities and projects last year due to COVID uncertainty and now they are all doing them at once. A full explanation is beyond me, I am not an economist.

[Serkevan]

With all the borrowing the UK Government has done I just worry that the younger generation are going to be picking up the tab for decades to come.It’s not that long ago we finished paying off the dept to the USA for WWII!

(Economics not politics!)

I was born during the 1992 recession, started going to college immediately after the 2008 recession... and I sure hope I don't finally finish my studies during a post-covid recession. At this point all of my friends and I assume that the best we'll get as a retirement pension is gonna be a pat on the back.

---------- Post added 07-29-21 at 03:07 AM ----------

A full explanation is beyond me, I am not an economist.

I was reading that the Federal Reserve printed very large quantities of fiat last year, to cope with unemployment payments and other covid-derived expenses. The effect on inflation was initially diluted because the dollar is still the de facto world currency so the value of the dollar against other currencies didn't nosedive (thus avoiding a lot of the import-dependent inflation)... but one still sees a higher-than-usual inflation as there's much more cash in circulation. Or in the stock market, which soared to over pre-Covid levels (with droves of small investors joining in) despite the real economy being more or less in the gutter - people just didn't have a lot of options for spending their money, so they turned to gambling investing.

I'm also not an economist but that sorta makes sense.

[house]

But builders that I know have told me that that their cost for boards and other materials for building homes have doubled since last year.

Sweden being a timber nation has seen prices multiply on many products. It's all going on export. Apparently a number of factors have coincided. Covid, fires in glue plants etc etc. Thing is that coinciding factors seem to be happening across many sectors of the economy. The economy is very fragile. Like the glue factory (plywood, osb) everything is brutally centralized to maximize "efficiencies". One glue factory burns down and global prices quadruple... great way of organizing the economy...

There are shortages in lots of places.

I'm no economist but has inflation been kept in check by ensuring very little money ends up in peoples pockets?

[biz-engineer]

Germany + 7.9% increase on transportation prices. The price of renting a car at the airport this summer is up 3 to 5 times more expensive than 2019.

[Serkevan]

Sweden being a timber nation has seen prices multiply on many products. It's all going on export. Apparently a number of factors have coincided. Covid, fires in glue plants etc etc. Thing is that coinciding factors seem to be happening across many sectors of the economy. The economy is very fragile. Like the glue factory (plywood, osb) everything is brutally centralized to maximize "efficiencies". One glue factory burns down and global prices quadruple... great way of organizing the economy...

There are shortages in lots of places.

I'm no economist but has inflation been kept in check by ensuring very little money ends up in peoples pockets?

Yes, this is not only due to centralization of manufacturing centers, but also partly a consequence of JIT (Just-in-time) manufacturing. When companies realized that modern logistics enabled having little to no stock of raw materials or parts, they focused on the millions of [currency unit] they could save due to lower inventory costs and less risk of not selling surplus.
However, they considered the increased vulnerability to supply chain disruptions to not be a big deal.

[biz-engineer]

When companies realized that modern logistics enabled having little to no stock of raw materials or parts, they focused on the millions of [currency unit] they could save due to lower inventory costs and less risk of not selling surplus.However, they considered the increased vulnerability to supply chain disruptions to not be a big deal.

It's not really a conscious decision to do so. A few years back , our operations director managed to have zero stock, so that even we aren't able to get samples of our own product which slowed us down significantly in our engineering works. When I ask him why he is doing that, he couldn't justify any meaningful savings being made, he only said "every one is doing that" so he is doing it as well. Today if you have inventory for certain products, you can make huge profits when customers aren't able to buy from anywhere else.

[house]

When I ask him why he is doing that, he couldn't justify any meaningful savings being made, he only said "every one is doing that" so he is doing it as well.

I hope he never earned more than minimum wage of at least got fired.

Somehow I expect none of the above happened. "meritocracy"

[biz-engineer]

I hope he never earned more than minimum wage of at least got fired.

No, the business started to make losses, the company sold the business to a company that stripped it down, we all got laidoff, and the operations director who organized the selling of our business line got promoted to vice president.

At this point all of my friends and I assume that the best we'll get as a retirement pension is gonna be a pat on the back.

What's happening in EU is that governments gradually push the age of retirement further based on life expectancy and economic figures etc. At the same time, private businesses of the technology sectors have lowered their target average age of employees and that's not public data, they won't tell you the hidden agenda when they hire you... (in the tech industry they target between 35 years old average, in IT it's even lower), which means currently about 80% to 90% of engineers and PdD workforce don't make it after 55 years old and if you did a PhD finished your studies at 28, you can never fulfill your condition of 40+ years of retirement contribution and if you get laid off after 50, good luck to find a new job in your profession. Nobody tell this to student who enroll in graduate and post grad studies otherwise they may decide to do other careers. Currently , the best option of a post grade student is to manage to get hired by a large public research organization and I wouldn't recommend to apply for jobs in the private sector, way too unstable and short lived and the risk factor is definitely not included as risk premium in compensation packages.

Inflation is a tax masquerading as an independently occurring economic phenomenon. The way governments "coin money" these days is an elaborate Ponzi scheme - they borrow money today to pay off the interest on yesterday's bonds, and pretend that the debt is an asset. That way, they can do multi-trillion-dollar spending plans without the appearance of having raised taxes. The inflation that results allows them to pay off yesterday's debt at pennies on the dollar, cheating the creditors, and making the people pay for it by devaluation of the currency.

That's what really causes the inflationary pressure, you know, it's a method of devaluing the currency without the sudden change or kickback that would occur if a government announced that the value of it's currency had been officially cut in half. E.g., the "Mexican Peso Crisis": Mexico\'s Past, the World\'s Future Currency Devaluations.

[jhaji]

The coronavirus Quantitative Easing?

[Parallax]

Well, this didn't take long to turn to politics. 4 hours may be a forum record.