While it is easy to blame greedy corperations and landlords, they aren't entirely at fault here, although I'm sure greed isn't helping the situation.
I was looking to buy my first home throughout the pandemic and I watched house prices rise by as much as 40% in my entire region of Australia.
Prices have stayed fairly stable since the pandemic ended but it depends on where you live obviously. My house insurance will rise by over 20% next
year and I also got a letter in the mail saying my council rates will increase by a minimum of 6.6% up to as much as 98.94% depending on what they
decide.
I think it's something they have to vote on but obviously they wont let us have any say. The electricity company also recently sent me an email saying
their prices would be increasing but they didn't specify by how much, although I'm sure it will be some unseemly percentage.
The Consumer Price Index has risen by over 7% just in the last year according to official sources. God only knows what the real figure would be if we
properly took into account all aspects of the economy. The cost of things like fuel and housing have risen much more than 7%.
They certainly "printed" more than 7% of the total money supply and injected it into circulation throughout the pandemic, not to mention all the
businesses which were shut down. All of this was completely predictable, but that would require some foresight wouldn't it?
You ever look at those countries who use notes with huge values like 100K or even million dollar notes and wonder how they got into such a nonsensical
scenario? They obviously didn't choose to purchase a loaf of bread with a 100K note, yet they wound up in that situation.
Most likely because they printed way too much money at some point in their history and it caused hyperinflation. But they decided to keep using that
currency after their economy recovered. They could have created a new currency, and make 1 unit equal to 100K units of the old currency.
But in reality it doesn't really matter what value you print on the notes, it matters much more how a currency is distributed. And inflation directly
leads to a more unequal distribution because the new money first makes its way to businesses and the investors of those businesses.
Even if the average person manages to get a cut of the handouts, most will quickly spend that money and give it to corporations. During the pandemic
most of the new money flowed to the monopolies because the smaller businesses weren't allowed to stay open, despite the fact it forced everyone into
the same spaces.
Not to mention, most businesses will not increase wages to keep up with inflation but they will increase prices to keep up with inflation. This is a
legitimate criticism of corporations but it wouldn't be possible if governments didn't devalue our currency, obviously greedy people will exploit
it.
The more inflation you have, the poorer people become, forcing the government to spend more fixing the problem. It creates a feedback loop until the
situation spirals out of control and you get hyperinflation. I don't think we are there yet, but it's a real possibility if we continue ignoring these
economic truths.
More socialism and more destructive climate policies are only going to make the situation worse. Everyone loves to blame the business owner or the
landlord, as if they suddenly decided to be much more greedy this year for no reason at all. Why didn't they raise prices so much in the years before
the pandemic?
They know people are struggling so much this year, so I doubt they are doing it simply to be cruel or make a few extra dollars. It's time to look at
the real root cause of the problem and stop looking at the symptoms of the problem. Nothing will change until we understand where the real blame
lies.
edit on 20/12/2022 by ChaoticOrder because: (no reason given)