Herbgrower, you seem to view the world through a singular lens…
“Covid smovid… I could just make a vinaigrette with some chervil and tarragon, throw that on the little swab they stick in your brain before they test and I’d feel jusr fine, shoot? And I grow that tarragon myself actually…”
“Food is going to be unaffordable”, I proceed to demonstrate just how cheap food is. So far price rises have just been a little bit the previous times things like this have happened. I don’t think there is any credible reason to expect food to go up by as much as some seem to make it sound like.
Just food price increases will mainly hit poorer people in poorer countries more.
Then again the median wealth in the US is less than Portugal - it’s a “rich” country only because a handful of people are stupidly rich, not because most people are - so most Americans are poorer than Brits (which has a median income above Portugal).
You do make a good point though.
As I see it, there are two factors here:
How much will food prices go up: on one side there are a few ways oil price push prices up, mainly increases in fertilizer costs (as most fertilizer is made from oil), farming machinery operation and transportation, whilst on the other side there is some flexibility on the Demand-side (people actually eat more than they need and can eat less) so its not like this is an inflexible market were a small inbalance between Production and Demand can massivelly move prices.
How tight are most people’s finances already. Specifically, how likely it is that there’s a “drop that spilled the glass” effect from higher food prices that mean it cascades into all manner of other things (such as mortgage defaults) because that pushed people over the edge.
Personally I’m more concerned over the latter mainly because wage growth in most of the West hasn’t kept up with inflation, inequality has exploded and most people have been so bad in terms of balance between incomings and outgoings that not only do they have little or no savings but aggregated credit card debt has never been this high.
Seems to me that the way this will explode is likely to be more akin to dominos falling due to various effects from oil prices increase cascading into an ever greater effect because we’re in an Economy where financially most people are already very tight, than due to any one overwhelming effect.
Herbgrower, you seem to view the world through a singular lens…
“Covid smovid… I could just make a vinaigrette with some chervil and tarragon, throw that on the little swab they stick in your brain before they test and I’d feel jusr fine, shoot? And I grow that tarragon myself actually…”
“Food is going to be unaffordable”, I proceed to demonstrate just how cheap food is. So far price rises have just been a little bit the previous times things like this have happened. I don’t think there is any credible reason to expect food to go up by as much as some seem to make it sound like.
Just food price increases will mainly hit poorer people in poorer countries more.
Then again the median wealth in the US is less than Portugal - it’s a “rich” country only because a handful of people are stupidly rich, not because most people are - so most Americans are poorer than Brits (which has a median income above Portugal).
You do make a good point though.
As I see it, there are two factors here:
Personally I’m more concerned over the latter mainly because wage growth in most of the West hasn’t kept up with inflation, inequality has exploded and most people have been so bad in terms of balance between incomings and outgoings that not only do they have little or no savings but aggregated credit card debt has never been this high.
Seems to me that the way this will explode is likely to be more akin to dominos falling due to various effects from oil prices increase cascading into an ever greater effect because we’re in an Economy where financially most people are already very tight, than due to any one overwhelming effect.