Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

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The internet believes the main driver of inflation is "money printing" in the US, and nothing to do with the post covid supply squeeze or the current energy crisis

The correct solution to avoid being at the wim of such friendly countries as Russia, Saudi, and China would be for Japan, Europe, the US, to massively invest in increasing internal free (renewable) energy sources, and diversifying strategic imports like silicon chips.

From 2015-2017 in the US renewable production increased from 558TWh to 710TWh, a 13% increase per year. Staying at that rate for the next 5 years would have put US renewable at 1,300TWh today or 31% - 500TWh more than today, leaving 500TWh of gas and oil to be used elsewhere and reducing the power of Russia and Saudi over the global economy. By 2030 the US would have hit 3,500TWh, up to wards 100% of current electric generation, and by 2040 at the latest to include the extra electric load from things like battery cars.

But instead the US didn't.

I am not disagreeing the supply side squeeze but this has been happening since 2020. If you look at container flow stat it is clear as early as 2021 we had severe clogging issues. The problem was the narrative back then from Fed was that this is all transitory. They didn’t act.

If the problem was a supply side squeeze, the Fed has no mandate or tools for that. They couldn’t act. That’s on the govt and private sector to solve.

That’s not true. You can reduce household demands by raising the rates which is what they are trying to do now. But the challenge is now the inflation has outpaced them and Fed has missed the mark by quite a bit. Heck they are now taking about raising rate by 100 basis point. A year ago this was unthinkable when meme stocks were on the fly. But you can’t raise the rates fast and not cause spiral in for example liquidity or repo market.

Point is Fed has done a lot of damage. In a functioning democracy, Fed chair would be summoned by congress and Fed would be held responsible for not keeping its dual mandate - price stability (which inflation is causing wreckage) and unemployment ( from an impending recession). If a Fed agency can’t keep its mandate, it’s time to look at its validity.

But of course our elected leaders won’t. They love nothing but delegating to unelected agencies full of so called experts so they don’t have to make hard choices/decisions and bear the consequences from voters. So they just shield themselves with experts.

> That’s not true. You can reduce household demands by raising the rates which is what they are trying to do now.

That changes demand, not supply, as you astutely observe. Fed has no tools for supply, by design.

That's why they've pushing back on the US govt recently, talking publicly about how current inflation is 30% due to demand (oversupply of money, low interest rates) and 50% due to supply constraints (food, energy, and Asian supply chain slowdowns). They're telling the US govt that solving inflation will require govt and private sector solutions to the supply problems. The Fed has no tools for those.

Supply chain disruption is only a problem because central banks from around the world tried to print out of the pandemic.

If they just let market run its course, we'd have a severe recession caused by shutdowns and job losses in early 2020. Demand for consumer goods would be significantly reduced and the crippled supply would be sufficient.

Supply of labor for the lowest paying jobs has been trending down since a decade ago (based on prices for those jobs having gone up since then). The bottom few income/wealth deciles have finally gained some negotiating ground, and so they can demand higher wages for late night work, customer service work, food service work, cleaning, and all that good stuff that allowed for cheaper products/services at all hours of day.

If I were to guess, the labor supply for those types of jobs will continue to decline, so I do not think there is any short term way to counter that factor of inflation without lowering expected quality of life or some miraculous automation innovations.

> some miraculous automation innovations

They don't have to be miraculous. In the UK, Brexit has caused the supply of ultra-cheap East European fruit-picking labour to dry up. Fruit growers are consequently now investing in automating fruit-picking.

Automation is simply engineering; these problems don't require miraculous inventions. Anyone can build a machine to pick a strawberry. The trick is building one to a price-point, that can pick an entire polytunnel clean, without damaging the fruit too much. It's not innovation, it's just applying stuff we already know to solve practical problems.

The lockdowns wouldn't have been possible without the PUA cash infusions; people wouldn't have tolerated it for more than a few days.

I just read a German interview with two technical professors about energy security in Germany.

They warned that massive investments into windmills and solar MUST be accompanied by massive investments into the grid, and that Germany fails spectacularly in the latter, especially because of onerous regulation and incessant NIMBYism. Namely, a lot of power from renewables is being produced in northern Germany and the shallow seas around it, where the country is only sparsely inhabited, and it is almost impossible to get this power in adequate volumes to the consumers in the highly developed and power-hungry regions in the south - Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg.

One of them also stated that Germany managed to build only about a fifth of the necessary network of new power lines in the last decade.

Greetings from Europe. It is not really any better here. Logistics is hard. Logistics in electricity doubly so.

The main driver of price inflation is money printing, but you need to account for where that money goes. Stock and real estate prices did experience massive inflation. The CPI does not account for this. Print money that can only be spent on hamburgers and sure enough, hamburgers will experience price inflation as well.

In England and Wales the median house price to median wage ratio in 1997 was 3.55. By 2007 this was 7.17. It dipped to 6.35 in 2009 before recovering.

In 2019 it was 7.73, despite interest rates having dropped from about 6% to under 1%, making mortgages far more affordable. The monthly cost of buying a home (which is what mainly drives the price).

In 1997 it cost 27% of the median gross income for a 90% 30 year mortgage on a median house at the 7% base rate.

In 2007 it cost 44% with a rate of 5.25%

In 2019 it cost 25% with a rate of 0.5%

Today it costs 32% with a rate of 1.25%

How do you explain Quantative Easing from 2007 to 2019, coupled with historically low interest rates, barely touching house prices. How do you explain house prices doubling from 1997 to 2007 without Quantative Easing?

Or did the QE in the UK not go into real estate market?

"The median house in the UK" isn't a particularly attractive asset to anyone except those who want to live in there, which isn't that many people.

Instead, you should be looking at the top locations that attract investment capital, such as London, which has experienced a much steeper price trajectory:

https://pearsonblog.campaignserver.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/...

People don't seem to grasp that lower interest rates make it cheaper to build new housing but more expensive to buy existing housing. Existing housing sits on land that appreciates in value, that is the primary driving force of higher real estate prices. The two effects basically cancel each other out.

You are in fantasy land if you think solar and wind could replace fossil fuels. Battery tech is (hopefully) a decade away and you can’t get over transmission issues to cloudier places.

The correct answer is nuclear and investing in our own fossil fuel industry.

Furthermore you are advocating for supply side economics. Totally agree - we need to cut taxes massively on business and encourage everything we can do for the private sector to invest in more supply production - of everything! But the left endlessly attacks business and sees them as the enemy, which results in less production and higher prices.

Fantasy land everywhere.

The op said renewable could replace the electricity generation and load from more EV batteries. They also said it would reduce reliance on those countries. Where is the fantasy?

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