World food prices reach new peak since July 2011 | Hacker News Reader

World food prices reach new peak since July 2011

fao.org

136 pointsinfodocket147 comments

I guess I still don't buy this being very serious inflation. Food finally costing as much as it did in 2011 just doesn't sound very inflation-y, in context.

The price index from 2009 to 2011 was a similarly substantial jump (actually a slightly larger one) than 2019 to 2021, and didn't even require global supply chain and labor madness. But many narratives seem to be "this is world changing inflation", and not "we're seeing food increases that are just as bad as they were in 2009-2011" or something a little less hyperbolic.

For that matter, it seems like prices are doing considerably better than that increase, given extenuating factors that will eventually be normalized. Yet I don't recall nearly as much doomsaying back then, with the exception of some geopolitical concerns that it may have kickstarted (the Arab Spring).

(And dairy, cereals, and sugar are still at lower prices than they were in 2011)

Generally I find it very funny that people are using the exact same graphs (though often with different starting points) to show that "inflation is definitely happening" (eg, lots of bitcoiners) and "here is proof that prices have been flat for a decade, and are only finally starting to surpass the prices of 10 years ago" (eg, taleb).

A major difference with 2009 imo (actually which you alluded to) is inflation expectations going up or inflation getting “embedded” in public’s psychology. That means people start factoring it into their decision most importantly salary negotiations.

It feels inflation talk is cutting through to the public much more than 2009 (am I right in this, those who were around back then?). More objectively more “serious” folks seem to flag it up as a major risk than in 2009, even some who were major supporters of 2009 QE (CEOs, Larry “secular stagnation” Summers, El-Erian)

Long term this might have greater impact on prices than covid induced supply shortages. At the very least it creates second order dynamics that are hard to predict.

Also note that in 2009 there was a substantial minority of (generally well-educated) people that were saying "deflation, then hyperinflation". I didn't fully understand their reasoning at the time - I was like "How do you get the hyperinflation?" - but it seems like that's exactly the script the world will follow.

The key was really what the banks would do with excess reserves. If regulators and the Fed had followed Krugman type advice, they would have encouraged or pushed the banks to increase lending again on those massive reserves. Instead they encouraged the banks to sit on the reserves and so that they could pass extreme 'stress tests.'

The current situation is like a permanent stress test combined with the already passed COVID relief bills encouraging aggressive lending. So they are basically following the dovish nostrum and we are getting the consequences that were warned about. It's a bit of a red herring to say that the stalled super-spending bills will push inflation off a cliff. That gun has already been fired. You would have to roll back the banking stuff in the emergency relief bills and raise rates to, uh, stuff the bullet back in the gun. The super-spending bills won't pass, but honestly both parties have an interest in obscuring their collective responsibility for the runaway inflation.

Another thing that isn't mentioned much outside of FX circles is that the USD is sharply down versus the Yuan. Typically China has been criticized for enthusiastically printing Yuan to improve their export competitiveness. Instead we have record imports from China combined with a substantially more expensive Yuan.

Debt to GDP is 130% and structurally basically guaranteed to nominally increase over the next 10 years given the epic insolvency of social security and medicare. Anyway, imagine our current congress not running a deficit. It's never going to happen.

But the record is pretty clear, there are a limited ways out of this situation.

1) Default on your debt : The US is never going to do this. It would be insane given the global position of the dollar and the fact that the fed can always buy treasuries to finance debt

2) Run persistently high inflation: This is how the US managed it's debt after WW2 : Real rates were around -15% for the better part of the decade. And at the end bond holders were screwed and the country was solvent.

3) Hyper inflate : basically off the table for the dollar given the huge structural demand for dollars and also going back to the point that the Fed doesn't want to short term implode all global capital markets.

4) Pull a japan and have no growth for a third of a century.

The easy choice is # 2. We have to have inflation. The supply chain stuff is just a detail.

CPI for energy is 25% percent right now. I've seen a figure for housing sales prices at around 17. Spy is up 33% year on year. Bitcoin is up I think about 600 yoy. The inflation writing is on the wall.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...

Inflation isn’t relative to any one commodity you need to look at everything from Big Mac’s and steel to street drugs.

Using the normal inflation measurements gives you a number around 5%. Which is all of 2% above the FED’s target. It’s a point of concern but no where near the double digit numbers people are talking about.

As to energy costs, those always fluctuate. Oil is at 81$ today and it dipped under 20$ in 2020, except in 2008 it hit 140$ even ignoring inflation.

Your first 2 paragraphs are contradictory…the fed’s normal inflation measurement is a very limited set of goods. No one really knows what inflation is at if we “look at everything”.

Oil price is also not a good gauge of inflation because it’s heavily controlled and doesn’t always reflect what you see at the pumps. When oil went to negative in 2020 you didn’t see free gas, maybe slightly cheaper, but no where near the change in crude/WTI prices.

That isn’t a contradiction, that’s the normal difference between any measurement and reality. Your speedometer isn’t accurate to 200 decimal places let alone actually correct.

So yep nobody knows real inflation out to even 3 decimal places, but that’s not a big deal in practice.

Note this article is about world food prices, not the United States food prices.

> Debt to GDP is 130% and structurally basically guaranteed to nominally increase over the next 10 years

Debt to GDP has actually been declining since Q2 2020 and sits at ~125%. There is nothing that says increases are inevitable.

> CPI for energy is 25% percent right now.

Yes and it was at negative 17% for April of last year and stayed negative for the whole rest of the year. Were you worried about deflation at the time? If instead of spooking yourself with rates of change, you switch your graph to Average price data and look at Gasoline, you'll see that we're still below 2014 levels.

> The inflation writing is on the wall.

Why don't we look at US food price staples?

Eggs are nowhere near their 2015 high: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111

Milk has yet to reach 2014 levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112

Sugar has yet to reach 2012 levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000715211

Pork chops spiked up hugely, almost back to 2014 levels! They're going back down now. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FD3101

Chicken too spiked higher (than ever before this time), and is now back at 2014 levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000706111

Rice is still lower than it was during the 2008 recession: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701312

Ground beef is the only one that's surpassed 2014 levels: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000703112

Time will tell.

> There is nothing that says increases are inevitable.

Several trillion dollars in new spending proposals make it inevitable.

Most of those several trillion dollars of spending proposals are spread out across several to the 10 years, and many of those proposals are paired with revenue increases that will offset the spending costs.

So, no, the existence of spending proposals absolutely does not make it inevitable.

Have we not printed 1-3 trillion dollars in the last two years? Like, a substantial proportion of all circulating dollars? How does that not immediately devalue the dollar?

Disclaimer, I am not an economist and don't know what I am talking about.

But, the birds eye view formula from my macro classes is MV = PY, where M is the money supply, v the velocity of money, P prices, Y real GDP.

GDP is usually going up, we have more people (and we hope they are each more productive). So that means that either the money supply or velocity must go up, or prices go down (deflation). Velocity is fickle and probably interrelated with consumer expectations around P (if you think things are going deflate for one thing, you might wait longer to make a purchase hoping to pay less in nominal terms, and this has the effect of shrinking MV even more relative to PY).

Since V is hard to control directly, in practice M has to increase regularly to prevent deflation. What we saw with the pandemic was large decreases in V and unexpectedly small decreases in Y. The fed increased M and it absorbed this differential. My understanding though is that the inflation doomers think the drop in V was transitory and now we'll see a sudden spike in all that money being unlocked and circulating

I assume that inflation (CPI) can be reflected by the increase of money supply only when people can't find a way to transfer the money to somewhere inflation-proof and can only spend it on consumer goods. That's absolutely not the case in modern days. Look at the housing price, that's where the money's gone.

Basically that’s my understanding. Anywhere you stick the money with low velocity will have the same effect on the left hand side of the equation to absorb increases in money supply. You’re right that people pick durable assets like houses to put it in, but it would have a similar effect on the velocity of the money supply if they buried cash in garbage bags for 15 years en-mass. People don’t do that because they expect reasonable and small inflation; you could imagine if that expectation went away though (either expecting deflation or very high inflation) how the money supply lever could stop being effective.

Through the velocity lense, the fact that QE and stimulus checks have very different inflation effects also becomes apparent- if you give a check to someone living paycheck to paycheck, they will spend it in their local community nearly immediately and it will be passed around quite a bit before getting locked into an asset price somewhere. If you edit the banks accounts at the fed or have the fed buy assets though, it seems to go quickly into asset prices where it sits for years before leaking into the economy as a whole, with a much much lower velocity. So $1 there != $1 here in terms of increasing prices.

First of all, the monetary base is only a small share of money supply - most of that is debt.

Secondly, printing those dollars does immediately devalue the dollar, just not to the degree you might expect.

The average American has no savings, they will not immediately renegotiate their wages upon the news that this money has been created. Therefore, their opinion about the value of the dollar has little impact. They have no dollars to sell for other things, they spend just as they used to, demand stays the same, prices are stable if not for supply issues. Stimulus checks are an exception to this, but we did see price increases in anticipation of that spending.

Those who manage wealth on the other hand already know that dollars are trash, now they are just a little bit trashier. They do not hold large dollar positions in the first place, instead they buy up all sorts of assets - stocks, bonds and real estate. This inflates prices and depresses interest rates, increasing paper wealth and encouraging cheap borrowing - exactly what the government wants.

In other words, massive inflation has existed for years, it just does not affect every part of your life equally. If you are in the market for a house, your purchasing power as a worker has been completely annihilated. If you are in the market for a hamburger, you are fine.

I was responding to a claim that the recent proposals for new spending made it inevitable.

Past spending isn’t relevant to the claim I was responding to.

"Democrats openly admit that their strategy is to pass new entitlements like national child care, disguise their cost by pretending to phase the programs out inside the 10-year budget window, but assume they will become permanent as they always do. This means the real cost of the Sanders-Biden-Pelosi budget is $4 trillion, and it will put the U.S. on a path to European entropy."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-3-98-trillion-trojan-horse-...

Forgive me if I do not consider the WSJ to be a credible source regarding this subject and this holds doubly true for the opinion pieces they run. To be honest, unless the WSJ editorial board is frothing at the mouth I know that any government proposal or program is far too small or ineffective to actually be worth the effort. They say you know a politician is lying when their lips are moving and I know a WSJ opinion article is lying to me when they make the effort to print the words onto the page.

I'm curious what your source of news is.

Daily/weekly read list is The Economist, FT, BBC, New Scientist and sometimes Le Monde or Suddeutsche Zeitung if there are events across the channel I need to care about; I will scan articles from the Times and Guardian but mostly for laughs.

The WSJ used to not suck. I had a subscription through college up into the early 2000s and my college roommate interned for them prior to joining as a copy editor in the early 90s so I have a bit of a soft spot for what the WSJ used to be. The opinion/editorial section was always hot garbage, but it used to be the case that the articles were high quality; ever since Murdoch bought them the quality of journalism has gone to shit and now the journal is only useful to wrap fish or as the punchline to a bad joke.

Fair enough.

First, that WSJ editorial is pay-walled, so I’m not going to respond to anything from the WSJ editorial. Rather, I’ll respond to the Penn Wharton analysis [1]

First, I don’t take exception to the Penn Wharton decision to assume permanency of a bill (though it’s odd to me when the press then refers to it as a scoring of the reconciliation proposal, when it explicitly notes that it isn’t a scoring of the proposed legislation). However, it does seem odd to me to rely on such a scoring to describe the inflation of that assumed spending as “inevitable”.

Is it fair to say it’s the goal of the Democrats pushing this legislation to make these programs permanent? Yes, that’s the goal. Does that guarantee that will be the case? As someone who wants many of these programs to become permanent, no, it’s absolutely not inevitable that these programs will become permanent.

Second, the argument was not that spending will increase, but that debt to GDP to increase. For that to be the case, you need to show that the debt will increase (and faster than GDP).

To do that, you need to consider the revenue side as well. The JCT score considers the actual proposal (not the assumed future proposal) and finds revenue that mostly offsets the spending [2]. This means the “spending proposal” would have limited impact on the deficit, and therefore the debt.

The Penn Wharton scoring does absolutely nothing to convince me of the inevitability of the debt to GDP increasing. First, it’s based on at least two pieces of hypothetical legislation. Second, it assumes no revenue changes are made when those programs are made permanent.

[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55693d60e4b06d83cf793...

[2] https://www.jct.gov/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=3fbf5966-deea...

I agree with the on topic point here - this food index doesn't really scream inflation (although it does scream tough times of someone). But...

> Debt to GDP has actually been declining since Q2 2020 and sits at ~125%. There is nothing that says increases are inevitable.

125% debt to GDP is well into the territory where countries do not pay their debts back in real terms. The US is a democracy, it is all but infeasible that the borrowings will be meaningfully repaid in full. Although physically speaking it is possible, if the US politicians thought that was feasible then the time to act was the 2000s. It is a bit late now. They've been at emergency debt levels (literally world-war level borrowing) for a decade now. Graceful recovery from that seems unlikely given the total lack of political will to do things the straightforward earn-more-than-spend way.

There's nothing that makes that debt load scary, unserviceable, etc. the US can raise taxes anytime. It's simply doesn't have to. It can play the annual debt ceiling chicken game without any real impact on its ability to issue new debt.

Raising taxes beyond a certain point tends to decrease the total tax haul as those with lots of money move income to other jurisdictions and some of others work less, leaning harder on social system (further increasing the public debt).

The US is very far from that.

How do you know?

The US economy is huge, people and companies are not likely to leave if the US increases taxes.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxe...

https://files.taxfoundation.org/20210517160849/The-tax-burde...

> There's nothing that makes that debt load scary, unserviceable, etc.

There absolutely is - there are a series of steps that will need to be taken to reduce that debt load. If anyone was seriously planning to see them through they wouldn't have let the numbers get that high.

This is emporor-no-clothes levels of debt; the plan is not to pay it back. If the plan was to pay it back then the plan would need to have started more than a decade ago. Who is trying to do that? Nobody. The plan is inflation.

There are two things that make debt unserviceable: debt payments and cost/rate to take on new debt.

Debt crises only happen when debt payments exceed ability to repay and the cost/rate to take on new debt spikes.

Everyone fails to appreciate the second factor when looking at large economy, stable country debt levels. High debt:GDP ratios are dangerous, but not intrinsically a crisis... until the market also loses faith.

Given that in the current international economic climate, the US can issue new debt, and find buyers, at <2%, that's a cheap way to buy time for even normal inflation levels to nibble away at debt.

Ironically, now is the perfect time to deficit spend, in the same way it's a perfect time for an IPO. Why would you not take money, invest it in something productive, if people are screaming to give it to you at negative real rates?

The US has been taking on new debt faster than inflation has chipped it away for around 40 years at this point. There is no evidence it is going to stop. If anyone who cared was anywhere near the levers of power it wouldn't have crossed 100% debt:GDP.

Sure it isn't a crisis right now. But the debt will continue to grow and at some point there will be a crisis because either rates will spike, or government manipulation of rates will turn out to have killed off real investment and critical parts of the economy will give out. And in neither of those scenarios are the people lending the US money going to see all of it come back.

Hopefully it is all lent by foreigners and not pension funds, that is all I can say.

https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-33...

There's nothing magical about 100% debt:GDP ratio. Why is "we need to work for a year to pay back all we have borrowed" qualitatively different from "we need to work 2 years" or 3. Or half a year.

First of all there's no need to pay it back in one year (or 2, or whatever fixed timeframe), it's very-very-very likely that if paying the debt service ever becomes a serious problem it's possible to switch it out with longer maturity bonds, and/or restructure it.

“The Treasury is already extending the WAM of the debt gradually over time under the current issuance profile.”

"The weighted average maturity (WAM) dropped from around 70 months just before the pandemic to less that 65 months - or just over five years - at the end of 2020 ..."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-yellen-bonds-...

It's entirely logical to take on debt as long as it leads to positive revenue/growth. (Meaning as long as it has a positive return on investment.)

>Debt to GDP has actually been declining since Q2 2020 and sits at ~125%.

I don't understand how this argument can be made in good faith. Q2 2020 GDP was down over 9% (32.9% annualized.) That that trend was transitory is shown by the 33.4% annualized growth the following quarter.

You didn't just draw a trend line from an outlier. You drew it from the single most extreme outlier in the recorded history of US GDP.

Or the 5th option: things continue the way they have been for the past decade of strong real GDP growth, moderate to low inflation, and rising deficits, and strong stock market, bypassing Japan stagnation. Predictions of crisis , hyperinflation, stagflation are popular but typically as far as the US is concerned, the most optimistic outcome tends to be the most probable.

Rates can only be kept so low before a real crisis comes and there are no levers to pull to soften the landing. Maybe the crisis isn’t for a while, but eventually the economy will overheat at the current pace, that’s just the business cycle.

Digital currency and negative rates?

Isn't that just inflation in a Halloween costume?

Inflation: your cash loses real value.

Negative rates: your cash loses real value and nominal value.

> Rates can only be kept so low before a real crisis comes

Ah yes, newton's 4th law.

Depends on the time frame of the debt. If most of it is in multiyear bonds then a bad year or two is not so dire, though I agree that the US has some structural challenges coming over the next two decades.

Also, one of the things I don't really understand is why people in the US quote debt to GDP ratios when net debt to GDP is strictly superior.

Except rates were realistic, debt to GDP was moderate for the entire time you are discussing and now they aren't even close so thid doesn't hold much weight for me.

The winning strategy over the long run is not betting on the most probable event, but rather hedging your bets so you don't get wiped out by ignoring other possibilities.

> Hyper inflate : basically off the table

This will not age well.

3): The dollar's status as the world's reserve currency should not be taken for granted. China holds 15% of US treasuries by itself. Saying that 'there is a huge structural demand for dollars' is like saying that 'the housing market is rock solid'. It is until it isn't.

Also I am not sure whether the decision to hyper-inflate is in Fed's hands. If inflation continues to rise faster than anticipated (contrary to what Powell said on Wednesday) then the Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place as the only feasible course of action will be to hike rates substantially and inevitably trigger a market correction. I leave you with this little chart I like: https://i.imgur.com/dIJXesa.png

Some of the options here assume that one can dictate what will happen in the future in a top-down manner.

"Pulling a Japan" and "Hyperinflating" are not choices that bureaucrats can dictate will or will not happen.

Social security and Medicare can't go bankrupt. They're transfer programs, not savings accounts.

what happens if the transfer in is substantially less than the transfer out?

Wait 'till you hear what rich boomers are doing with Medicare avoidance trusts!

What!?

Yeah, the government pays for absurd amounts of advanced health care using even advanced experimental drugs if you put all your assets in a Medicare avoidance trust. The states chip in too. My mother's a multi-millionaire who spent most of her life as a non-working investment banker's wife and she's getting Cadillac brain cancer surgery and huge amounts of incredibly expensive drugs for free from the government, thanks to the magic of paying an accountant.

In the USA poverty is fairly significant. Those living just above that line, also very significant. To that add those in the "paycheque to paycheque" category. That's bad enough.

Now to that add (coming up on) 2 yrs of Covid terror and even a small price increases, in the context of no clear vision of better days ahead, and the result is plenty of stress and suffering.

Logically, you're correct. Emotionally, it's a different story for plenty of those in the USA.

Surely slamming the brakes on the economy so that we can reduce inflation is going to hit those people worse.

Because poor people have their networth in assets?

No, the lower class depends on salary from employment, which hasn't recovered[1].

What the Fed interventions did to the economy is inflate assets, that's it. Real GDP, productivity and employment have declined.

"Slamming the brakes on the economy" i.e. raising rates would allow the stock market and other asset markets to deflate, which would proportionally affect the upper classes more. Lower classes would enjoy reduced food, gas and rent prices, while not seeing meaningful net worth reduction.

Of course this is precisely the reason this won't happen. Nobody whose voice matters benefit from the inequality gap being reduced to pre-QE levels.

[1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate

Poor people are dependent on wages, which would go away if people started getting laid off.

I think it's pretty clear that most inflation talk right now is just about political ideology. Maybe economic ideology. Some people are just sure that hyperinflation is around the corner, and desperate to find hints of it whatever they can, seemingly sure that 3% CPI means we will see hyperinflation in a few days.

US CPI has been approximately 5.4% for 5 months. That kind of sustained inflation hasn’t been seen in over multiple decades.

The UN reported back in April 2020 that lockdowns would cause over 130,000,000 people to starve. That's close to half of the US population.

Most of countries in South America pay an average of $1-3 per hour. Bangladesh pay as little as $0.09 per hour and Sudan pays a mere $0.04 per hour. Dozens of poor, African and Asian countries pay less than $0.30 per hour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...

When international food prices go up, the "poor" in the US become inconvenienced. Elsewhere across the world, hundreds of millions starve.

Have those predictions come to pass?

Ever heard of something called the Arab Spring?

Yes

More precisely, they say 118M extra people in 2020 which is 12M less than projected, but that's small comfort to the hundred-million people who can't get enough to eat.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-se...

That's not all due to the pandemic, according to your own link:

> Hunger was trending upward even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated existing effects from extreme climate events, conflict, and other shocks to economic opportunities.

COVID death toll across the entire world is only around 5M.

Only a tiny fraction of that 118M is needed to make COVID look like nothing in comparison.

118M is the increase in people facing chronic hunger. 5M are deaths. Those aren't the same thing.

Nobody would say that chronic hunger isn't horrible - it is - but it is highly disingenuous to compare it directly with deaths. Chronic hunger is a systemic issue.

There are simply too many confounding factors to arbitrarily place the blame for a given % of hunger increase on COVID mitigation measures. We know it had some significant effect, but can't say much beyond that, and certainly can't draw any conclusions about whether the measures were appropriate or optimal based on that. To do so would be lying with numbers to advance an agenda.

Furthermore, letting the virus run wild and kill millions more could have resulted in tremendous increase in hunger itself - economies and supply chains don't handle mass death well, ever. Now you might say that is speculation, but it's no moreso than the % of 118M argument that you forwarded.

It's far to early to be Monday morning quarterbacking the pandemic - we are still very much in all dimensions of it.

> COVID death toll across the entire world is only around 5M.

Gross underestimate, india itself has an excess mortality of 5M or more.

That's a bullshit argument. Farmers have never been stopped seriously by lockdowns outside of the first world where migrant workers are used. The food is there. Those countries have price controls, so the food won't be burnt.

International food prices have gone up 25%. Many regions like Sudan or warring regions don't have enough locally-grown food. There are famines going on in FOUR countries at the moment and food growth has generally slowed the past couple years too.

Your suggestion of price controls is like a certain French queen telling her starving population to just eat cake.

It's easy to dismiss what these people are going through because it's far away and out of sight. I don't want to be that person.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-se...

https://www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit/news/2021-going-be...

https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/09/1072712

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094472

I'm not dismissing them. I'm telling you that international food prices do not matter. These farmers do not sell their food at international prices. That's something that's allowed in very few third world countries. I'm not making a suggestion, I'm informing you of the reality. If my family growing up had to pay international food prices I'd be dead or severely stunted.

It's not far away and out of sight, I come from a third world country myself. If it weren't for these laws 99% of the food would be exported and people would starve.

It's definitely an issue for regions that cannot grow their own food, yes. There are not enough of those for 130 million people to starve. And while yes, there are multiple ongoing famines, none of them are caused by lockdowns. Instead, their root cause is either drought, crop failure or predominantly war. It's important we find the right causes.

Food growth has not slowed. The growth in food growth has slowed. Food production is still increasing every year.

I don't mean to say that hunger is not an issue. It is. It's just that lockdowns have not been a significant issue in this respect. In the places where hunger is a deadly issue, international food prices simply do not matter.

They get paid 1-3 an hour, and pay a fraction for their food.

A fraction for their food is true, but a much larger fraction than people in the US. Furthermore, the 25% worldwide price increases matter more.

An average person in the US spends $2,641 per year on food. If you're a dev making 100k per year, that's less than 3% of your income. Increase that by 25% to $3,301 and it's still just a little over 3%.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-how-mu...

Some countries spend as much as 50% of their income on food. A 25% increase bumps that up to almost 63% of their income.

Would you consider yourself in trouble if you were spending 60-65K per year on food?

That's still not equivalent because your excess of 30-35K is still enough to buy lots of nice things. If you're making 5K per year, that leaves just 1-2K for everything else you need. Remember, consumer goods aren't really cheaper in these countries.

> An average person in the US spends $2,641 per year on food. If you're a dev making 100k per year, that's less than 3% of your income. Increase that by 25% to $3,301 and it's still just a little over 3%.

$2,641 per year is just over 7 bucks a day. If a $100k salaried dev is able to pull that off, it’s only because they are milking the free office food.

It simply isn’t that hard to live on $7/day in most of the US. Been there and done that. Loads of cheap, good food has always been available. Even in tech country (where I live).

Eggs are $0.75/dozen here right now. Tuna is $0.79/can. Legumes round to free. Meals aren’t free but they aren’t expensive. You can live damn well on $7/day if you are remotely competent and have even basic cooking skills available to everyone.

Food in the US is very inexpensive.

Where the heck are eggs 75 cents for a dozen? Even buying directly from farms in the rural south eggs were at least $2 per dozen and that was a steal.

They're $1.60/dozen at my local Walmart.

Food in the US is indeed inexpensive but it's only technically true that someone can live on nothing but eggs, beans, and canned tuna.

$7 is not even hard with some cooking skills. One don't even need those legumes, but rather any dish that have rice or pasta. Dishes with potatoes work also when they are in season.

As an example, red curry doesn't cost a lot per person. The most expensive part is the chicken and there isn't that much considering the rice, the sauce, and the vegetables. Curry dishes are a stable in fast food because they are easy to prepare, cheap and quite tasty.

The bigger question is if a $100k salaried dev is willing to spend time cooking. Personally I practice the once-a-week cooking model where I buy in bulk and focusing my cooking on a single day in order to make finished portions that I freeze. This saves both time and money. The more expensive aspect here is actually breakfast, which is hard to make cheap since bread, butter and cheese are all things that is hard to save money on by buying in bulk.

Or they cook at home and bring food to the office.

Why would lockdowns cause starvation? Genuine question.

Do you believe that food is just magically produced and just appears in the store shelves?

Lockdowns impact the entire system, and proclaiming some jobs as "essential" and other as "non-essential" is the highest form of arrogance as all employment is essential to the business that employs the person or they would not have the employee.

Supply Chain's are very fragile, as the world has come to see, you toss a monkey wrench in the center of that by have governments attempt a top down mandated lock down where they deiced by fiat who should work, who should not, well you are going to have a bad time.

As history has shown now.

Central Planning never works, never has worked, and never will work. People need to stop trying it

> Do you believe that food is just magically produced and just appears in the store shelves?

Yes, that's obviously what I believe. Thanks for the condescension, I see we're off to a great start.

> Lockdowns impact the entire system, and proclaiming some jobs as "essential" and other as "non-essential" is the highest form of arrogance as all employment is essential to the business that employs the person or they would not have the employee.

Okay, but presumably a smart government would decide that all jobs involved in the production and transportation of foodstuffs are essential. I know my country's government did.

> Supply Chain's are very fragile, as the world has come to see, you toss a monkey wrench in the center of that by have governments attempt a top down mandated lock down where they deiced by fiat who should work, who should not, well you are going to have a bad time.

And how do you distinguish the monkey wrench of "government fiat" from the monkey wrench of "lots of people who work in the supply chain getting sick"?

https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/covid-19-in-us-po...

> Central Planning never works, never has worked, and never will work. People need to stop trying it

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone tried to implement Central Planning, but I'm happy to read any you might have.

>>Okay, but presumably a smart government would decide that all jobs involved in the production and transportation of foodstuffs are essential. I know my country's government did.

That is the folly of this way of thinking, all jobs are interlinked, you can not just extract jobs from the market and not have an impact.

The person that cooks breakfast for the truck driver that picks up the food from the warehouse that stored the food that came from the factory that made the food from ingredients from a farm field is just as "essential" as ever other person in the chain.

As is the IT worker that works on a helpdesk for the credit card processor that service the restaurant that truck driver above stops at every morning

As the manufacture of the monitor stand that the IT worker uses to hold up their monitor to enable them to service the Restaurant of the truck driver...

and on and on we go down the chain.. Look up I, Pencil[1] for a better understanding of this

Government just pulling out people they claim are "not essential" to food production or other essential things is foolish because all jobs are essential. Period. non-essential jobs do not exist, and any government claiming there is, and claiming they are smart enough to make that determination should never be trusted with anything.

>I haven't seen any evidence that anyone tried to implement Central Planning

The very nature of choosing who can work, who cant, what is jobs are essential, what jobs are not is Central planning

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE

> The person that cooks breakfast for the truck driver

...the truck driver can make breakfast at home.

> As is the IT worker that works on a helpdesk for the credit card processor that service the restaurant that truck driver above stops at every morning

The truck driver probably shouldn't during a pandemic.

> Government just pulling out people they claim are "not essential"

Again, if you have actual evidence of this, I'll read it man, but otherwise I've got no time for your anarchocapitalist rants.

You're right of course, it's the lazy lower class that is causing the supply chain issues. If only the truck driver would make his own breakfast at 4AM so he can be at the yard by 4:30AM so that he can work 14 hours (because, as we've seen in the past week, the trucking industry isn't bursting with employees) and then be home by 7PM.

Should he cook his own lunch too? Maybe he can wake up at 3:30AM for that.

What about his dinner? Maybe he can wake up at 3AM.

Can he read his kids bedtime stories? Maybe he can wake up at 2:30AM so that he has time at the end of the day. After all, he has been deemed essential.

> make his own breakfast at 4AM so he can be at the yard by 4:30AM

So, what time of day was he previously stopping at a diner for breakfast? And how long did that catered breakfast take? Longer than a bowl of cereal and two bits of toast?

> Should he cook his own lunch too?

Who the hell cooks lunch? And if it takes you 30 minutes to make sandwiches and grab a piece of fruit, I feel for you.

Kudos though, that was an amazing linked list of reductio ad absurdum fallacies. Have you considered going into media relations for a political party?

The price of coffee has been the cheapest I’ve ever seen at my store.

Consider we might be in a bubble: https://www.reuters.com/world/higher-food-prices-help-fuel-4...

Experts predicted that there might be more hunger deaths from the pandemic than from Covid. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Maybe try coming to Brazil, living on a BRL paycheck, where people are BUYING bones with DECAYED MEAT because it's more profitable to the food industry to export the actual food instead of selling it on the local market because the FED is exporting the USA inflation to poorer countries. Then, maybe, you will buy it's serious inflation.

As ever, people have the answers ready to go and crowbar events to them over and over.

Inflation aside, I'm more concerned with civil unrest. This correlates very closely with food prices.

Last time was the Arab spring (Jan 2011 basically)

2 data points. real convincing. people have been predicting unrest forever. they have a really poor track record at this. Living standards for most Americans are higher than ever. Food affordability is the least of America's problems.

> world food prices

> Arab spring

Emphasis mine. We aren't talking about America right now.

Sure, but at any given time there is unrest in the world. Is there more convincing evidence for a causation? Did food in the Arab world rise even more than other countries? Is the general unrest, when dissected to specific regions, usually tied to higher food and water?

Just pointing to a correlation when there's always some country in civil war or unrest seems a bit shaky. But I'm no expert on Arab countries, so I might just be naïve. It just feels like we're fitting causation to something that's pretty much always happening in the modern world.

Tip, if you think you're being naive, don't insist that others don't know what they're talking about.

Ctrl-F for "food": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring , especially in the References.

This website used to be clearer on correlations versus causation. I'm not going to die on this hill because food is likely a factor, but you do understand my fundamental point of correlation between factors when one of them is literally always happening, yes?

Interestingly enough, one of my original questions is answered in the Wiki page. Food did rise more in the Arab world than other parts of the world (remember this from my original question? Or was it just ignored?), therefore the correlation might imply causation. Despite this, notice how this specific thread is about World prices and not trends in specific countries. Meaning that this thread is still correlating a constantly ongoing effect with a new trend, and, again, you can do this with anything.

>Tip, if you think you're being naive, don't insist that others don't know what they're talking about.

Literally never claimed that _anyone_ didn't know what they are talking about. On occasion, people on this website may want to admit their own knowledge gaps -- it's called self-awareness.

I didn't imply that was my proof. I simply asserted, based on my knowledge, that it correlates very closely.

Feel free to do your own research to see whether data backs this up. I'll even type it into Google for you! :-)

https://www.google.com/search?q=food+prices+civil+unrest

> Living standards for most Americans are higher than ever.

We spend more on our military than the other top 5 or so nations combined, both in terms of total spending, spending vs GDP, and spending per capita.

We just saw a massive transfer of wealth from 99.9% of the population to less than .1% since the pandemic (and even before that, economic inequality was the worst it's been in at least half a century).

We're 10th in the world in terms of the most hours worked per week.

We have some the worst (and most expensive) cellular coverage and wired internet, in the developed world.

Food deserts are massive and have been growing for decades, in part thanks to supermarket chains running around permanently 'poisoning' commercial property with deed restrictions to try and lock out competitors.

Childcare and housing is the least affordable it has ever been.

Corporations like Walmart pay wages so poor they hire staff to help their employees file for welfare. The world's richest man pays his delivery drivers so poorly they have to piss in bottles, and has working conditions so poor he pays for private ambulances to be stationed outside his warehouses rather than, say, properly ventilate them

Suicide rates for children and teens has skyrocketed.

Most of the rest of the world, healthcare doesn't cost a patient a fucking dime but here 66% of personal bankruptcies are medical-cost related.

Our life expectancy is one of the worst of developed nations (and generally declining); a child born today in the US is worse off than 34 other countries.

Corporations have the smallest share of tax burden in history while also having nearly unlimited 'representation' in terms direct and indirect influence thanks to Citizens United; they buy elections and write the legislation.

Road safety for anyone not in a car is the worst it's ever been and, again, among the worst in the developed world.

Our personal privacy and freedom has been eroding at record rate since 2001 in the name of 'fighting terror'

We're one of the most conservative nations in the world when it comes to almost any social policy matter.

Did I forget anything?

> We're one of the most conservative nations in the world when it comes to almost any social policy matter.

Struggling to understand this one…

The famous saying is that civilization is only 3 meals away from chaos.

At least if we're talking about the rich countries, the government can always parachute food in. I can't imagine the whole of USA being hungry, when the first Covid lockdown almost caused this, suddenly every politician agreed to give everyone money (Socialism?! Handouts?! The alternative would've been political suicide, even the hardcore GOPs knew that).

The buying power (or the credit power, the promise that "I'll pay you") of the rich countries mean they can buy food, in the burning planet future where there isn't actually enough food to go around, the rich governments will probably even buy someone else's food leaving them hungry, and when money isn't enough coercion, the military will be.

But can we? We keep thinking all this stuff is stockpiled somewhere. We're the ventilators stockpiled, what about n95s, what about TP. No we are seconds away from running out of shit and that's just true.

The rich countries are rich because they produce high-value things. If the value relation changes against them, they will stop being rich quite quickly.

I see a lot of people commenting about inflation and printing money but if you actually read the FAO's analysis, they say a lot of this is due to supply reduction. Maybe the cause is actually more related to climate than monetary policy?

I thought lockdowns and supply chain disruptions.

It’s more likely a combinations of lots of things…printing money, checks from government, supply chain disruptions, etc…

I'd throw in warfare and labor force reduction too.

And don't forget energy prices. Several fertilizer plants have temporarily close because with current energy prizes it's not good business.

Energy is an input to everything, and directly to food through fertilizers and oil prizes (for agricultural machines and transport).

Some people has been predicting inflation because "printing money" for more of 50 years. I predict that if current inflation disappear, nothing will be learn.

Like everything, this effectively becomes a new tax on the middle class. I did not consent to this, did you? As time goes by more people will start noticing their total lack of power when it comes to politics, and will start to look for alternate avenues to exert their influence on their living conditions.

> this effectively becomes a new tax on the middle class

Middle class but, even more, low-income class.

did you boss consent to paying you more? Inflation in the US is mostly just a shifting of the y axis like algebra.

This has been going on all along - van life, buying out Austin in the 2000s, retiring/cashing out To buy multiple Airbnb properties to live off of, buying out Austin in 2020, etc.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the alternative would have been far more calamitous so, sure, they can have my consent.

More mean tweets would have been far more calamitous than, well, everything we’re seeing today?

The Fed chair is the same guy so that seems pretty much irrelevant, doesn't it? I mean the economic effects of inaction would have been a massive recession, which would have been worse than the inflation by a long shot. Some inflation was also inevitable because it's driven by scarcity.

It’s not irrelevant because Presidents always place pressure on the Fed. The Fed isn’t the only issue at play here either.

What do you think Donald Trump would have done differently that would have been better?

> I did not consent to this, did you?

The US does not teach civics adequately and it shows

Edit: Apart from that line, I agree

The actual high food prices are still to come. The spike in the price of natural gas in Europe and Asia caused shutdowns in a few types industry, one of which is fertilizer production [1]. It will take some time for the effect of that to appear in food prices.

Some countries are already putting restrictions on fertilizer exports[2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/16/fears-for-u...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nitrogen-fertilizer-...

I'm very price conscious when it comes to grocery shopping and I'm starting to just buy less of everything. Cookies, meat, everything is either getting shrunk, or the price is making me walk away. I'm going to have to start taking a real hard look at my spending habits when it comes to food now more than ever. Steak was once a week or two is now lucky to be once a month if that.

Your inflation cope is "lowered expectations / standard of living". Not everyone is as realistic.

Do yourself a favour and don't buy cookies at all ...

If I did myself a favor and didn't buy anything that wasn't good for me I'd probably die or be even poorer due to the cost of "healthy" foods.

Just a humble suggestion, but maybe you should read up a little on food, cooking and nutrition. It's actually easier than most assume and you will feel healthier and happier if you change some minor things around. You deserve better than the way you might be treating yourself. Don't be afraid to think that. Good luck.

There's no inflation when you account for how cheap money is. Banks can borrow for nothing, and you have to pay double for your food, so it all evens out. No inflation. You just have to think like an economist and it all makes sense. Brrrrr!

That's some poorly crafted charts.

and yet we are to believe the official propaganda numbers of "5% inflation".

If even remotely true this will cause way more death than 10 COVIDs combined.

how many people have to starve to death as a result of these doves trying print unlimited money and give it to people out of "compassion"?

obesity rates are rising everywhere. a bigger problem is too much nutrition, not people going hungry

You can be obese and malnourished. I would imagine most obese people aren't getting the correct nutrition, that is why they continue to eat after they have had enough calories.

You shouldn't need to "control" yourself around food, your should just eat what you crave and stop when you are satisfied, but the increase of processed food and obesity rates show this is currently not the way it works anymore.

The problem is not too much nutrition, but too much nutrient lacking food

> You shouldn't need to "control" yourself around food, your should just eat what you crave and stop when you are satisfied, but the increase of processed food and obesity rates show this is currently not the way it works anymore.

I disagree with this. There are plenty of well nourished people who are obese. I eat very whole foods yet still find myself gaining weight if i don’t watch my caloric limit. As humans we’re basically beagals and would eat ourselves to death if we didn’t have the intellectual capacity and self awareness to stop.

Many people DO eat themselves to death.

Yeah, people do eat themselves to death eating whole foods as well as processed foods. Eating processed foods is clearly linked to higher rates of obesity, but my point is that many people still get fat eating whole foods unregulated until they are satiated.

depends where. in afghanistan and parts of africa, the issue is still starving to death. and even changing food prices globally by a few percent leads to marginal deaths

What makes you think it was out of "compassion"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com