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The combined effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have led to a more severe inflationary shock than the US, but with much worse economic growth and lo

The combined effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have led to a more severe inflationary shock than the US, but with much worse economic growth and lower wage increases. The majority of households have cut their spending in recent years. https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Eurotrack_CostOfLiving_Sep24.pdf https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Eurotrack_Co...

stkdump 2y ago
Interestingly page 2 of the file doesn't seem to indicate a crisis. All the numbers a roughly stable, some are actually improving (for example less people struggling with housing costs in Germany and generally fewer people struggling in France). What sticks out is that more Germans expect a recession around the corner.
flohofwoe 2y ago
It would make sense if the benchmark would be about smartphones, but laptops and desktop computers are already non-essential 'luxury items'. If the poorer half of people can't afford a new computer I would expect the benchmark to go up, because the rich people will still buy highend computers while the lower half would drop out of the benchmark completely. FWIW, I stopped upgrading my gaming PC since 2018, not because I can't affort an upgrade, but because the hardware has been "good enough" (still sporting an RTX2070). Also, the 'living cost crisis' in Europe has been quite dramatically overblown by Russian propaganda, at least we haven't frozen to death or eaten our pet hamsters yet ;)
- bmacho 2y ago
  > If the poorer half of people can't afford a new computer I would expect the benchmark to go up, because the rich people will still buy highend computers while the lower half would drop out of the benchmark completely. Surely you can twist this 2-3 times more, can't you? .. people have computers, because otherwise they die. If people have less money, they buy cheaper computers. Simple as that.
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    What I'm seeing in my wider family and friends-circle (outside dedicated 'computer nerds' of course) is that owning a (private) computer has become very unusual in the last 10 years. My nephew built himself a PC for gaming - but that's definitely a 'luxury item' because a game console would be much cheaper. And that's about it. Everybody owns at least one smartphone though.

stkdump 2y ago

Interestingly page 2 of the file doesn't seem to indicate a crisis. All the numbers a roughly stable, some are actually improving (for example less people struggling with housing costs in Germany and generally fewer people struggling in France). What sticks out is that more Germans expect a recession around the corner.

flohofwoe 2y ago

It would make sense if the benchmark would be about smartphones, but laptops and desktop computers are already non-essential 'luxury items'. If the poorer half of people can't afford a new computer I would expect the benchmark to go up, because the rich people will still buy highend computers while the lower half would drop out of the benchmark completely. FWIW, I stopped upgrading my gaming PC since 2018, not because I can't affort an upgrade, but because the hardware has been "good enough" (still sporting an RTX2070). Also, the 'living cost crisis' in Europe has been quite dramatically overblown by Russian propaganda, at least we haven't frozen to death or eaten our pet hamsters yet ;)

bmacho 2y ago
> If the poorer half of people can't afford a new computer I would expect the benchmark to go up, because the rich people will still buy highend computers while the lower half would drop out of the benchmark completely. Surely you can twist this 2-3 times more, can't you? .. people have computers, because otherwise they die. If people have less money, they buy cheaper computers. Simple as that.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  What I'm seeing in my wider family and friends-circle (outside dedicated 'computer nerds' of course) is that owning a (private) computer has become very unusual in the last 10 years. My nephew built himself a PC for gaming - but that's definitely a 'luxury item' because a game console would be much cheaper. And that's about it. Everybody owns at least one smartphone though.