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I'm not familiar with the details of UK's issues, but I doubt that the subject at hand, food price inflation, can really be put on the back of Brexit. Pretty m

I'm not familiar with the details of UK's issues, but I doubt that the subject at hand, food price inflation, can really be put on the back of Brexit. Pretty much all the Euro Area (of which the UK was not a part of) sees similar numbers. According to [0], it was at 15.5% in October, from 13.3 in September. https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/food-inflation https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/food-inflation

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
To be clear, I wholeheartedly agree. I just want to emphasize that, to the degree that UK's overall problems are worse that the EU's, Brexit is largely to blame. And this is taking into account some pretty boneheaded things that EU countries did, like Germany deciding to phase out nuclear in 2011.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  To what degree are they worse than the EU's? You're making a very slippery argument here. You started by asserting that things are worse in the UK than elsewhere in Europe and this is due to Brexit, but you didn't name any specific way in which things are worse. So you were called out on it because this discussion is about a single data point - food price inflation - which is not different to elsewhere. Now you're saying well no, but if things were worse then it'd be the fault of Brexit. HN discussions on anything UK related seem to always be like this nowadays. Intellectual curiousity is dead, killed by motivated reasoning. "Things are worse, I won't say what, but if anything is worse, then it's clearly Brexit and not anything else". That's not a valid argument, it's not even an attempt to lay the groundwork for an argument. We get it - you wish no country ever left the EU - but if you want to blame leaving then you need to show a causal relation, not simply assert that the EU can only ever make things better in any conceivable capacity.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    The UK CPI increase year-over-year was 11.1% in October [1]. The France CPI increase was 6.2% for the same period [2]. That is a huge difference for similar developed economies. 1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/october2022#:~:text=a%20year%20earlier.-,The%20Consumer%20Prices%20Index%20(CPI)%20rose%20by%2011.1%25%20in,which%20began%20in%20January%201997 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull.... 2. https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/france-inflation-rate/#:~:text=Current%20France%20inflation%20rate&text=The%20Consumer%20Price%20Index%20for,to%20October%202022%20was%201.03%25 https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/france-inflatio....
    - mike_hearn 4y ago
      Now compare to Germany. The difference is caused by France more heavily subsidizing/capping energy costs. It reflects a short term deviation in market policy triggered by gas shortages, not some fundamental divergence.
      - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
        Exactly, that's specifically why I pointed out the issue of Germany's poor energy decisions. Germany is getting killed due to their decision to hook their wagon pretty much entirely to Russia for energy, and their inflation rate of 10.4% in October still was lower than the UK's. The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this.
        vladvasiliu 4y ago
        How do you define a "comparable country"? According to [0], the UK isn't doing that much worse than Germany (12.2 vs 12.6%). It's doing same as Norway and better than the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and way better than Sweden. The latter being barely better than Ukraine, which is actually at war. Now I agree those are "smaller countries", so maybe not comparable? Some "peripheral countries" are doing great (Romania), others terribly (Hungary). This is to say that values are over the place. I don't see any emerging trend that would allow easily to pinpoint the reason prices are going up in this or that country but not in the other. The issue with Germany's decision, wrt to nuclear, is that it affects everybody because of the way electricity prices are set in the EU (priced for the most expensive production). [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-index-cpi?continent=europe https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-ind...
        mike_hearn 4y ago
        No, the UK is doing about the same. Look at the data: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate Netherlands: 14.3% UK: 11.1% Germany: 10.4% Euro area: 10.6% Italy: 11.8% etc. "The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this." Nobody debates this because outside of the HN anti-UK bubble nobody is claiming it, and nobody is claiming it because it isn't true. This is what I mean by HN discussions about the UK being hot garbage for the last few years. Way too many posters are willing to simply make things up in order to attack the UK.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

To be clear, I wholeheartedly agree. I just want to emphasize that, to the degree that UK's overall problems are worse that the EU's, Brexit is largely to blame. And this is taking into account some pretty boneheaded things that EU countries did, like Germany deciding to phase out nuclear in 2011.

mike_hearn 4y ago
To what degree are they worse than the EU's? You're making a very slippery argument here. You started by asserting that things are worse in the UK than elsewhere in Europe and this is due to Brexit, but you didn't name any specific way in which things are worse. So you were called out on it because this discussion is about a single data point - food price inflation - which is not different to elsewhere. Now you're saying well no, but if things were worse then it'd be the fault of Brexit. HN discussions on anything UK related seem to always be like this nowadays. Intellectual curiousity is dead, killed by motivated reasoning. "Things are worse, I won't say what, but if anything is worse, then it's clearly Brexit and not anything else". That's not a valid argument, it's not even an attempt to lay the groundwork for an argument. We get it - you wish no country ever left the EU - but if you want to blame leaving then you need to show a causal relation, not simply assert that the EU can only ever make things better in any conceivable capacity.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  The UK CPI increase year-over-year was 11.1% in October [1]. The France CPI increase was 6.2% for the same period [2]. That is a huge difference for similar developed economies. 1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/october2022#:~:text=a%20year%20earlier.-,The%20Consumer%20Prices%20Index%20(CPI)%20rose%20by%2011.1%25%20in,which%20began%20in%20January%201997 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull.... 2. https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/france-inflation-rate/#:~:text=Current%20France%20inflation%20rate&text=The%20Consumer%20Price%20Index%20for,to%20October%202022%20was%201.03%25 https://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/france-inflatio....
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    Now compare to Germany. The difference is caused by France more heavily subsidizing/capping energy costs. It reflects a short term deviation in market policy triggered by gas shortages, not some fundamental divergence.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      Exactly, that's specifically why I pointed out the issue of Germany's poor energy decisions. Germany is getting killed due to their decision to hook their wagon pretty much entirely to Russia for energy, and their inflation rate of 10.4% in October still was lower than the UK's. The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this.
      - vladvasiliu 4y ago
        How do you define a "comparable country"? According to [0], the UK isn't doing that much worse than Germany (12.2 vs 12.6%). It's doing same as Norway and better than the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic and way better than Sweden. The latter being barely better than Ukraine, which is actually at war. Now I agree those are "smaller countries", so maybe not comparable? Some "peripheral countries" are doing great (Romania), others terribly (Hungary). This is to say that values are over the place. I don't see any emerging trend that would allow easily to pinpoint the reason prices are going up in this or that country but not in the other. The issue with Germany's decision, wrt to nuclear, is that it affects everybody because of the way electricity prices are set in the EU (priced for the most expensive production). [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-index-cpi?continent=europe https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/consumer-price-ind...
      - mike_hearn 4y ago
        No, the UK is doing about the same. Look at the data: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate Netherlands: 14.3% UK: 11.1% Germany: 10.4% Euro area: 10.6% Italy: 11.8% etc. "The UK is simply doing worse WRT inflation than any comparable country, and nobody, not even Conservative UK politicians, really debates this." Nobody debates this because outside of the HN anti-UK bubble nobody is claiming it, and nobody is claiming it because it isn't true. This is what I mean by HN discussions about the UK being hot garbage for the last few years. Way too many posters are willing to simply make things up in order to attack the UK.