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> My cereal became 20% more expensive. > Jetbrains becomes 20% more expensive. I understand the frustration but surely you can see the causality link here? Je

> My cereal became 20% more expensive. > Jetbrains becomes 20% more expensive. I understand the frustration but surely you can see the causality link here? Jetbrains employees have to eat too. The individual solution is sadly for you to ask for a 20% raise and screw people down the line. Global solution would be enforced price controls, we know it works because France did it after the war, the government imposed lower prices and started selling good directly itself and France got out with a much lower inflation than other countries.

solids 4y ago
IMHO enforced price controls leads to shortages (and I experienced them first hand, I was born in Argentina) Also using an example from 70 years ago doesn’t seem enough to justify it.
- JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
  A cynical person could say that today is the perfect time for enforced prices because there alreay is a shortage of everything.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Yes and, after all, what problem can't be solved by making it worse?
  - cplusplusfellow 4y ago
    That cynic would then be rewarded with even fewer of the things that they wish to purchase.
Aeolun 4y ago
> I understand the frustration but surely you can see the causality link here? Jetbrains employees have to eat too. Haha, no, I didn’t, but now that you point it out it seems obvious ;) That said, I somehow doubt Jetbrains employees will see these raised prices reflected in their salaries.
- lfowles 4y ago
  Surely they've already been getting raises of some sort for the past 7 years! This is just the product catching up.
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
Price controls don’t work; the US figured this out during WW2 when it just led to shortages, had spotty enforcement, and needed a gigantic bureaucracy to actually determine prices. It’s easy to see why price controls fail to work: if there’s 10 guys willing to pay 10 bucks for 10 apples, setting the maximum price of an apple to $1 isn’t gonna change the fact that more people want apples than there are apples. This either means queues so those most willing to queue gets things (the soviet model), black markets where things are bought at the true value (nonsensical official exchange rates see this), or a mixture of both (WW2 US). We currently have inflation because of a few things, mainly that there’s too much money chasing too few goods. So the equilibrium is that raised prices lead to people buying fewer things because they can’t afford as many, and a new supply/demand equilibrium is established. But of course this can’t happen if wages are also going up, as people just try to but the same always amount of things with their newly increased salary, and we’re back to the problem of not enough good again. The only way this gets solved is a mixture of increased supply of good, decreased demand through either decreasing real salaries, increasing real prices, and quantitative tightening. People don’t like hearing this, because hearing that you’ll meet to have less purchasing power in order for supply to meet demand means that things that you could afford previously can no longer be bought. Saying that wages shouldn’t go up is a non-starter, and rightfully so, which is how inflation-wage spirals get started. Basically, the only way out that’s politically feasible (I mean politics in the general sense of people interacting with each other, not government) is to trigger a recession and then everybody is forced to buy fewer things and nobody has to say “we’re not raising your salary because that just exacerbated the problem”.
valcron1000 4y ago
If price controls worked I would be living in a paradise. Yet here I am, +80% inflation expected for this year alone (Argentina)
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  Blaming price control as the issue or really any one exonomic argument for Argentina won’t work. Argentina has been a failure in so many ways. Not all of it only the countries fault either. We can see having tons of natural resources can be great. Canada and Norway are good examples. There are specific reasons why most other resource rich countries in Africa, ME, South America, have not fared as well.
ymolodtsov 4y ago
> Global solution would be enforced price controls, we know it works because France did it after the war, the government imposed lower prices and started selling good directly itself and France got out with a much lower inflation than other countries. That was way more complicated than you described. War-related price controls are very different because of many things, and even in countries whose territory wasn't directly affected people experienced shortages constantly.

solids 4y ago

IMHO enforced price controls leads to shortages (and I experienced them first hand, I was born in Argentina) Also using an example from 70 years ago doesn’t seem enough to justify it.

JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
A cynical person could say that today is the perfect time for enforced prices because there alreay is a shortage of everything.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Yes and, after all, what problem can't be solved by making it worse?
- cplusplusfellow 4y ago
  That cynic would then be rewarded with even fewer of the things that they wish to purchase.

Aeolun 4y ago

> I understand the frustration but surely you can see the causality link here? Jetbrains employees have to eat too. Haha, no, I didn’t, but now that you point it out it seems obvious ;) That said, I somehow doubt Jetbrains employees will see these raised prices reflected in their salaries.

lfowles 4y ago
Surely they've already been getting raises of some sort for the past 7 years! This is just the product catching up.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

Price controls don’t work; the US figured this out during WW2 when it just led to shortages, had spotty enforcement, and needed a gigantic bureaucracy to actually determine prices. It’s easy to see why price controls fail to work: if there’s 10 guys willing to pay 10 bucks for 10 apples, setting the maximum price of an apple to $1 isn’t gonna change the fact that more people want apples than there are apples. This either means queues so those most willing to queue gets things (the soviet model), black markets where things are bought at the true value (nonsensical official exchange rates see this), or a mixture of both (WW2 US). We currently have inflation because of a few things, mainly that there’s too much money chasing too few goods. So the equilibrium is that raised prices lead to people buying fewer things because they can’t afford as many, and a new supply/demand equilibrium is established. But of course this can’t happen if wages are also going up, as people just try to but the same always amount of things with their newly increased salary, and we’re back to the problem of not enough good again. The only way this gets solved is a mixture of increased supply of good, decreased demand through either decreasing real salaries, increasing real prices, and quantitative tightening. People don’t like hearing this, because hearing that you’ll meet to have less purchasing power in order for supply to meet demand means that things that you could afford previously can no longer be bought. Saying that wages shouldn’t go up is a non-starter, and rightfully so, which is how inflation-wage spirals get started. Basically, the only way out that’s politically feasible (I mean politics in the general sense of people interacting with each other, not government) is to trigger a recession and then everybody is forced to buy fewer things and nobody has to say “we’re not raising your salary because that just exacerbated the problem”.

valcron1000 4y ago

If price controls worked I would be living in a paradise. Yet here I am, +80% inflation expected for this year alone (Argentina)

skinnymuch 4y ago
Blaming price control as the issue or really any one exonomic argument for Argentina won’t work. Argentina has been a failure in so many ways. Not all of it only the countries fault either. We can see having tons of natural resources can be great. Canada and Norway are good examples. There are specific reasons why most other resource rich countries in Africa, ME, South America, have not fared as well.

ymolodtsov 4y ago

> Global solution would be enforced price controls, we know it works because France did it after the war, the government imposed lower prices and started selling good directly itself and France got out with a much lower inflation than other countries. That was way more complicated than you described. War-related price controls are very different because of many things, and even in countries whose territory wasn't directly affected people experienced shortages constantly.