Greedflation will probably prove to be a brief moment in history – two years, possibly three, when corporations jacked up prices above and beyond the extra costs they faced, while most people were more concerned with the pandemic and later the Ukraine war.
Brief it may be, but history won’t be kind if we ignore the importance of greedflation, as most economists and policymakers have done so far.
That’s because companies sneaking through mega price rises using the war and the pandemic as cover are stealing everyone’s incomes. They are 21st-century war profiteers and should be recognised as such.
Just as all the data is coming through to prove that greedlfation isn’t actually a thing this is the hill that Inamn decides to die upon.
Vry well done that man.
I wondered what those signs in Tesco meant; “In order for us to supply you with sanctified fish fingers we need you to set up a trust fund and make a donation to our offshore charity before you pay at the till for your shopping”. I feel better knowing it’s the evil capitalist GREEDFLATION…
I’m prepared to believe it’s not real but when you see products being reduced by 25% in quantity and sold for the same price as before it does make you wonder.
Yes Martin. I’ve noticed that the bastards have put the price of the apple juice I usually buy.
The turds.
ooops ‘put up’
I would like to know who these greedflators are, so I can work for them.
Feels like the only major UK businesses currently not cutting back on costs and staff are the big energy companies we’re throwing Net Zero subsidies at. (And maybe construction?) The rest of the private sector, and the public sector, are in serious trouble. Ain’t nobody happy in UK plc at the moment.
Is blaming “greedflators” just the modern version of blaming The Jews, kulaks, saboteurs and wreckers?
But he was very good in that comedy about the department store.
I think we’ve had some of it here. At least it’s extraordinary how much prices have gone up in the last couple of years. Especially the tourist facing ones. Must be at least 30%. There were a couple of visits to a restaurant last summer a month apart. We always order the same, why we go there. 48€ went to 56€ & the 48 was well up on the previous year.
They seem to be trying to make today’s punters pay for the Covid hiatus. As if it’s an entitlement.
One could see the result when last year’s tourist figures were published. They were boasting tourist numbers had recovered to 98% of ’19 & spending up 12%. Sorry your dagonesses. With the price rises, that’s going backwards, not forwards.
Far as I can see, they’re killing it. First weekend in June, we should see tourists here. These 12 weeks are vital to our economy. Going out last night, the place was virtually deserted. Most of the people out & about seemed to be the ones who live here. And what visitors are coming here aren’t spenders. Forget the last time I saw a bunch of english lads out on the booze. Sort who’d spend a 100 or more in a night & not much less during the day. If they’re holidaying abroad somewhere, it ain’t here.
I do think it is down to greed. They got used to the fat years which were declining even before ’19. And are trying to extract the same out of smaller numbers of tourists with less money.
You got similar in Portugal, Tim?
BiS, isn’t that partly the cost of flying? From what I’ve seen, the dirt cheap flights from the UK (when I could go foreign for less than a train ticket to London) seem to have gone.
“ data is coming through to prove that greedlfation isn’t actually a thing”
Tim, could you link to a nice easy source on that, something we can quote to lefties?
@RichardT
I do wonder about that. When I was commuting I used to get excited airline prices. Until I realised the money difference I was getting excited about was less than I’d spend on the way from the airport. Depends on what proportion of vacation costs are going on airfare. With the prices they’re now charging down here, doubt if it’d cover a day.
That said, people do pay more attention to a single identifiable cost than to what can be dribbled away in bits & pieces. Yuman nature.
Someone, somewhere pointed out that greedflation is only possible with the consent and active support of consumers: that the relationship between price and how much is bought does not exist.
If Tesco puts milk on its shelves at £10 per litre and shoppers buy it…
There is also an assumption that retailers’ prices go up but their costs never do. Funny old World.
Out of interest, do people still go on package holidays? Just not something I know about. I’ve never been on one in my life. And I’ve never really known the sort of people who did. Are “employed” with an annual holiday entitlement, sort of life style.
O/T but this amused:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/tomiwa-owolade-this-is-not-america/
How American jargon infiltrated British English – and our politics
The richness of our language is under threat like never before – and an imported culture is to blame
First para of the article:
The other week, I was having dinner with a Cambridge academic who was American but had spent more years living in Britain than the land of his birth. At one stage he used the word “entrée” to refer to the main course of our meal. This caused confusion around the table: surely he meant the starter?
Yer wot? What sort of people is he mixing with? To me, the entrée’s always been the main course. (Derived from the french entre between, I imagine.) The starter – that is an americanisation – is the hors d’ouvre. The two are followed by dessert (although having lived in France, I can get another 3 courses in there, easily) Part of the english language custom of using french for food. As it uses anglo-saxon for the animal & french for the meat.
But the articles written by someone calls himself Tomiwa Owolade. About as english as Admiral Yamamoto.
“Out of interest, do people still go on package holidays? ”
What do you think people like Tui sell?
https://www.tui.co.uk/destinations/deals/spain-deals?vlid=T|DLP|NO|AV|NA|NA|NO|NO|NO|BAU|36
Their revenue was £14bn last year…….
There is also an assumption that retailers’ prices go up but their costs never do.
True, but to what extent?
I think it’s part of what’s gone on here. The Spanish do seem extraordinary obsessed by percentages. To me, running businesses, percentages are just something mildly interesting come out of the final figures at the end of the year. I think in terms of actual money.
I’ve a feeling that the Spanish have seen percentage rises in certain of their inputs & are trying to pass that percentage directly on in their prices. But you neither need to (or can) do that. Rents won’t mostly have changed & wage costs will lag. The value of your asset is historic. So, effectively, they’re trying to increase profits on trade in actual terms. Against a fall in demand. That’s a recipe for going bust.
The P seem more sensible. Yes, of course, inflation. But tourist pries are up by inflation and not a lot more that I can see. Ps have long been trading folk, bread, butter, side, they grasp
https://news.sky.com/story/greedflation-theres-no-evidence-supermarkets-are-profiteering-and-this-is-why-12883001
https://www.ft.com/content/dbedd482-0556-42ed-bc74-ac1de7c63c6c
Thank you Tim.
BiS, re flight costs, also people look at the flight cost before they decide whether to go. They don’t see the increase in local restaurant, bar etc. prices until they get there, so I’d have thought the impact of that wouldn’t show through until a year later.
@BiS: “like never before”. I thought that was quite a decent joke in the headline. Or perhaps the headline writer is a tin-eared mutton-headed prat.
I thought our esteemed host had posted something last week disproving this greedflation nonsense?
“ RichardT
June 4, 2023 at 10:41 am
“ data is coming through to prove that greedlfation isn’t actually a thing”
Tim, could you link to a nice easy source on that, something we can quote to lefties?”
As well as Tim’s response you could also point out that the BBC’s More or Less team has also dismissed it as false.
They’re you go Jim. It’s not a company I’d ever heard of. Probably the result of news bias. Collapsing holiday companies make headlines Successful ones don’t. And I haven’t had a “holiday” for 40 years. I’ve always just gone places for the reason at the time.
Interesting Tim. Spain’s had a long history of price controls & monopolies. Not to mention endemic corruption. I’m told all the licenses for tobacco shops in the town I’m in are basically owned by the same family. It seems to have produced an entrepreneurial class who expect to wax fat by entitlement rather than effort.
The most appalling rent receivers here are Notaries.
Give you an example. There’s a service industry that’s seen a rough period since Covid because what it’s selling is very much discretionary & with the wider economic problems there’s less money about. So obviously with turnover down, fixed costs (relative to turnover) have reduced profit margins. There’s simply an oversupply for current demand. The response from the players has been to increase prices & they’ve all followed each other up. They’re now mostly 60% higher than they were 3 years ago with the results you can imagine. My response would have been reduce prices, accept lower profits or even short terms losses & attempt to compete my competitors out of the market. But they seem to think they have an entitlement to profits & that customers are obliged to provide them.
And much the same thing has happened in other sectors.
Property agents? The commissions they charge relative to UK are eyewatering. Why half the property deals are done without them. And gestors. Which are essential to navigate your way through the effin bureaucracy.
@bloke in spain – “They seem to be trying to make today’s punters pay for the Covid hiatus”
Of course they are. There’s nobody else available to pay. Few businesses are so rich that they can simply absorb the losses, so they either recoup them now or go out of business.
@Charles
Sure, one can expect businesses to try & recover some or all of the expense they incurred during Covid. That’s part of preserving the continuity of the business. But lost profit? No business is entitled to make a profit.
I think there’s something came out of the Covid period, particularly in the public sector. An attitude that there will be economic costs, but “Other people can pay them because we are going to ensure we don’t”. And whether they did depended on how much influence & power they had.
In the private sector you can try that, but it depends on how indispensable you are, whether you’ll succeed.
@bloke in spain – “No business is entitled to make a profit.”
No. But they’re entitled to try. Normally, the profit is limited by competition.