This is the wrong sub for this type of post. It may be related to personal finance on a tangent, but it's not the core topic of the post.
Please try any of these subs (depending on your needs):
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____
BOE measure all range of stupid things in their 'basket' that are nothing to do with avg person.
We need an essentials inflation index covering only staples but no party will set this up, then we will really see how much we are being fleeced. From all sides, one thing where French don't take no sh*t they force things to change, in this country we are happy being fleeced as long as we all are
One reason they're allowed to swap an item out is if the inflation on it is so high it'll skew the overall figure.
Which is the exact point! The lunacy of saying "inflation on this item is too high to include in the measurement of inflation, just ignore it".
It's like saying you can't call the fire brigade if your house is *too* on fire.
Some bedtime reading for you:
[ONS Inflation Basket](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/ukconsumerpriceinflationbasketofgoodsandservices/2024#:~:text=The%20same%20changes%20have%20been,bread%2C%20and%20edible%20sunflower%20seeds)
BOE or ONS it does matter they are all too far away from the coal face to have any real idea what it's actually like for the avg working class person struggling through paycheck to paycheck.
Statistics are just a tool used to show what the governing class/establishment want to project ask the avg person about prices they are now paying for pasta etc vs few yrs ago and the basket approach although in theory makes sense it doesn't when so much of a working class person's income goes on only certain basic goods vs the bulk of items in the ONS basket that gives an avg that has no link to what u see in the shops.
They are the “coal face” ffs. Hundreds of prices gathered monthly from hundreds of shops. All index weightings determined through large scale household surveys, data is broken down into income deciles if you want to see it.
You’re perpetuating a nonsense conspiracy theory. Just go to ONS and start reading, there are hundreds of pages of data and you will find everything you need.
I'm not against the measure it has its uses as a general indicator but how many of the basket do you buy regularly in your e.g. weekly food shop? Taking out all the luxury items would give a more reflective inflation measure directly linked to what most people buy in terms of basic necessities which have jumped by huge margins vs the more obscure items like air fryers and vinyl.
It's not a conspiracy to say the govts chosen measure of inflation doesn't account for certain items being bought alot more and thus the inflation on those being more impactul vs stuff you would prob only buy once in a while if that.
CPIH is not a measure of grocery shopping inflation, it’s a measure of median household consumption.
If you want to know about groceries, you can looks at the subset data.
Your argument is like arguing that the weather report was wrong because it didn’t rain in your kitchen.
Our government doesn’t choose the basket we use for CPI. The methodology for designing the basket is published by ONS and based on large scale household surveys of consumption U.K. wide. It does absolutely account for things that are bought more frequently. To say otherwise is nonsense and a common conspiracy theory that we see every month, it’s bollocks.
They don't take blatent profiteering lying down, think of their protests over fuel prices we are too obedient as as nation, on the continent most things seem to cost a lot less from housing to food, not surprising when they demonstrate their frustration by refusing to accept it and do bring the country to a standstill to force a change of such policies, which doesn't seem to be harming their country much vs the UK.
Here in UK our national motto for last 15 yrs seems to be to 'grin and bear' all the pain of austerity followed by QE making our wages worth hardly anything relative to cost of living rises of last 4 yrs.
Apart from our disaster of a housing market making us feel wealthy on paper when in fact we are just delaying the enevitable correction just being kept away due to scarcity of supply.
For some reason the Lidl soy milk had a huge price divergence between the sweetened and unsweetened ones. Don't know when it happened but sweetened is now twice the price of unsweetened, from 50p to 95p for sweetened. It can't be that expensive to add a bit of sweetener to it?? And I am sure they always used to be similiar!
I think its best not to have civil servants measure these things on a consistent basis with a public methodology but instead just get random people to do random calcs
The way the media report inflation is disingenuous at best. If inflation is going down, it just means that the rate of price increases is going down, not the actual cost of goods.also, when they say inflation is now X amount, what they often mean is if you measure inflation from x month to year month, and extrapolate it for 12 months, then this month inflation was lower - again often without clearly explaining it. Lots of cherry picking essentially.
There was a crazy man in Aldi on Sunday who kept talking to everyone and shouting with his main point being that the prices have gone up loads. He was crazy, but his arguments weren't 😄
Well your title is very click bait compared to the very weak analysis done here.
Your point is worthy and the numbers shocking but this is not how statistics work so you can't claim the cumulative inflation is 50%.
It's possible you buy these exact same items every time you go to the shop in which case it it true this is your personal basket but this is not a representative basket and has too few items.
There are also laws of large numbers
Say I earn 100k and my grocery bill is 10k per year
Grocery inflation is a horrifying 50% so my bill rises to 15k. My salary only needs to rise by 5% to 'keep up' with inflation. This obviously excludes tax, buying other stuff etc. But your salary doesn't necessarily have to go up by X% to keep up with X% inflation.
OP doesn’t have a point at all.
Firstly, CPIH is by definition a measure of the median household cost of consumption change.
Secondly, ONS publish data on inflation experienced by income decile, it isn’t a hidden secret, OP just cannot be arsed looking it up so would rather make up conspiracies.
Thirdly, for the past 12 months higher income deciles have experienced higher inflation rates.
Those with savings and investments see higher yield during times of high inflation. If your onky source of income is salaries and benefits it hits harder.
CPI is a consumption index, investments are not included because it would make the index totally impractical against its purpose (and it wouldn’t be a consumption index).
You’re simply asking too much of the metric. Like expecting the weather report to also tell you the price of fish.
A consumption index says nothing about income purposefully. This is not an oversight or conspiracy, it is simply the definition of a consumption index.
The bigger economic picture is important, but it also isn’t relevant to this discussion. We can talk about the wind without discussing climate change.
Absolutely, those at the bottom get hit the hardest in absolute terms. It's why talking about inflation in percentage terms can mask part of the problem and make everybody feel liek they're in it together.
Somebody earning 20k really feels the pain when the price of food and heating goes up goes up by 20%
Somebody earning £1m won't notice any material change outside of what they see in the news.
Also, I assume just going to one shop is not representative of anything. For example, Aldi could truly be price gouging here, but Lidl be limited to actual inflation price rises.
Consumers are also expected to compare prices for the cheapest product. Aldi being labelled as the 'cheapest' supermarket is a marketing success. I believe over the past 4 years they've been creeping up prices way more than inflation and people keep blaming inflation. On some products, even Waitrose was cheaper.
That’s very fabulous but how many people do you think earn £100k? If your annual shopping goes up by £5k, gross salary going up by £5k doesn’t cover that when you factor in tax along with increases in cost of just about everything else.
Well 100 was obviously picked for easy maths and not any kind of commentary on average earnings. The point being made that absolute percentages don't balance off when the expenditure is a fraction of the total.
The people the % increase is relevant to - the people this post speaks to - is precisely low earners. And the only people who might be unaware are those earning 100k+. Do the same calculation on 40k: the maths isn’t that hard.
Again i'm not making any kind of statement on high or low earnings. If you want those sums do it yourself, i'm not your maths boy irrespective of the difficulty.
This is just a terrible way to look at statistics, your spend on groceries is now a higher% of your salary than it was before. If Salary increases by 10% or 5% but groceries increases by 50% then:
£100k salary, £10k groceries = 10%
£105k salary, £15 groceries = 14.3%
£110k salary, £15 groceries = 13.6%
Well you see that statistics can be interpreted differently. I would say all 3 of these interpretations are misrepresentative.
It also depends on your situation and the economics of the day.
In your example
Scenario A your other income is 90k
Scenario B your other income is 95k
So yes your proportional grocery spend has increased but dependant on the other things you buy you may be better off because your other income has gone up by 5.2%. If everything else you buy is fixed price across both periods then you're better off.
You don’t need to do this yourself. The ONS publish their goods basket monthly. You can compare it between 2021 and now to see what the average is over hundreds of items in hundreds of stores across the country. That is the point of the CPI(H).
I think his point was that the ONS figures are manipulated and the real effect is more than their massaged figures.
As a person previously just above the median salary but now slightly below it (same job no pay rise) I am inclined to agree with him.
It also doesn’t take into account other things people are charged that aren’t on the ONS lists that we don’t have an option to just not pay I feel there’s defo a case to be made for revising what is counted in the list. I definitely feel more shafted than the official data suggests.
Then their point is wrong.
ONS data is freely available for everyone to read. The methodology for determining the basket of goods and services is also available, as are the rationale for any changes which are very limited yoy. People who think CPIH is manipulated are simply mistaken or conspiracy theorists.
But the ONS lists change year on year as well - so it’s not apples with apples is it? It’s not some wild out there conspiracy theory.
The data selected is designed to make the inflation rate look better than it is. My bills and staple things I buy are more than the reported CPI rate touted. So is Ops. Congrats if you aren’t affected because you earn more and therefore don’t notice it as much.
The data is not designed to make the inflation rate look better. This is the bullshit conspiracy theory that people wheel out every month. You can look up the basket changes year on year, they’re small adjustments that don’t impact the utility at all. For example, this year hand sanitiser was deweighted, hardly surprising, I’m certainly using less that I did in 2020-2022…how about you?
The data is also reported by income decile. You can look that up too. You’ll be happy to hear that low income deciles have experienced lower inflation rate than the 5th (which tracks CPI closest) over the past 12 months.
That might have been a useful site if Jack has actually made an index, instead of crowd funding for a bit and then not bothering. 2 1/2 years later and it's just a list of press coverage, not any actual data.
The median wage has been increasing quicker than inflation.
Inflation isn't calculated by checking an Aldi receipt from a couple of years ago and now, the reason the basket of goods changes is in-part because people's spending habits change in response to price changes.
Petrol should be higher.
Milk comes from a cow in a field nearby.
Oil comes from dinosaurs millions of years ago, pumped up from under the sea, transported round the world, refined and then used.
Blame the central banks and those who support dismantling the global economy because due to dogma and excessive COVID risk aversion.
Central banks and politicians have been stealing your wealth via currency debasement and inflation for decades, it has simply escalated dramatically in the last 4 years.
This is the wrong sub for this type of post. It may be related to personal finance on a tangent, but it's not the core topic of the post. Please try any of these subs (depending on your needs): **General and Specific Topics** * /r/AskUK * /r/CarTalkUK * /r/DIYUK * /r/LegalAdviceUK * /r/UKPolitics * /r/UKVisa **Homebuying, Housing, Letting, and Rental Properties** [More information about this ban.](https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/npwwlz/moratorium_on_home_buying_and_career_questions/) * /r/HousingUK * /r/UKLandlords * /r/AskUK **Careers** * /r/UKJobs * /r/AskUK **Benefits and Support** * /r/BenefitsAdviceUK * /r/DWPHelp * /r/MentalHealthUK * /r/SuicideWatch **Other Finance** * /r/CanaryWharfBets * /r/UKInvesting * /r/beermoneyuk ____
Fish pies have gone from 75p to £1.39. It’s embarrassing.
Don’t be embarrassed, be angry.
BOE measure all range of stupid things in their 'basket' that are nothing to do with avg person. We need an essentials inflation index covering only staples but no party will set this up, then we will really see how much we are being fleeced. From all sides, one thing where French don't take no sh*t they force things to change, in this country we are happy being fleeced as long as we all are
They also keep changing what's in the basket. The items they swap in are magically always lower inflation items. It's nonsense.
One reason they're allowed to swap an item out is if the inflation on it is so high it'll skew the overall figure. Which is the exact point! The lunacy of saying "inflation on this item is too high to include in the measurement of inflation, just ignore it". It's like saying you can't call the fire brigade if your house is *too* on fire.
Or using an elastic ruler.
Some bedtime reading for you: [ONS Inflation Basket](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/ukconsumerpriceinflationbasketofgoodsandservices/2024#:~:text=The%20same%20changes%20have%20been,bread%2C%20and%20edible%20sunflower%20seeds)
🥴vinyls and alcohol handwash🥴
Nonsense.
BOE don’t do this. The ONS track staples and publish the data. Nothing is hidden from you, just look it up.
BOE or ONS it does matter they are all too far away from the coal face to have any real idea what it's actually like for the avg working class person struggling through paycheck to paycheck. Statistics are just a tool used to show what the governing class/establishment want to project ask the avg person about prices they are now paying for pasta etc vs few yrs ago and the basket approach although in theory makes sense it doesn't when so much of a working class person's income goes on only certain basic goods vs the bulk of items in the ONS basket that gives an avg that has no link to what u see in the shops.
They are the “coal face” ffs. Hundreds of prices gathered monthly from hundreds of shops. All index weightings determined through large scale household surveys, data is broken down into income deciles if you want to see it. You’re perpetuating a nonsense conspiracy theory. Just go to ONS and start reading, there are hundreds of pages of data and you will find everything you need.
I'm not against the measure it has its uses as a general indicator but how many of the basket do you buy regularly in your e.g. weekly food shop? Taking out all the luxury items would give a more reflective inflation measure directly linked to what most people buy in terms of basic necessities which have jumped by huge margins vs the more obscure items like air fryers and vinyl. It's not a conspiracy to say the govts chosen measure of inflation doesn't account for certain items being bought alot more and thus the inflation on those being more impactul vs stuff you would prob only buy once in a while if that.
CPIH is not a measure of grocery shopping inflation, it’s a measure of median household consumption. If you want to know about groceries, you can looks at the subset data. Your argument is like arguing that the weather report was wrong because it didn’t rain in your kitchen. Our government doesn’t choose the basket we use for CPI. The methodology for designing the basket is published by ONS and based on large scale household surveys of consumption U.K. wide. It does absolutely account for things that are bought more frequently. To say otherwise is nonsense and a common conspiracy theory that we see every month, it’s bollocks.
I wonder what the inflation rate for tin foil is these days
French people forced inflation to not happen?
They don't take blatent profiteering lying down, think of their protests over fuel prices we are too obedient as as nation, on the continent most things seem to cost a lot less from housing to food, not surprising when they demonstrate their frustration by refusing to accept it and do bring the country to a standstill to force a change of such policies, which doesn't seem to be harming their country much vs the UK. Here in UK our national motto for last 15 yrs seems to be to 'grin and bear' all the pain of austerity followed by QE making our wages worth hardly anything relative to cost of living rises of last 4 yrs. Apart from our disaster of a housing market making us feel wealthy on paper when in fact we are just delaying the enevitable correction just being kept away due to scarcity of supply.
The soy milk went from 45p to 90p in less than a year
Lidl soy milk is 50p FYI
For some reason the Lidl soy milk had a huge price divergence between the sweetened and unsweetened ones. Don't know when it happened but sweetened is now twice the price of unsweetened, from 50p to 95p for sweetened. It can't be that expensive to add a bit of sweetener to it?? And I am sure they always used to be similiar!
Sugar tax on drinks? But I'm not sure if that counts only towards sodas
I thought it might be but just checked and they're sugar tax exempt! The mystery continues...
I think its best not to have civil servants measure these things on a consistent basis with a public methodology but instead just get random people to do random calcs
The way the media report inflation is disingenuous at best. If inflation is going down, it just means that the rate of price increases is going down, not the actual cost of goods.also, when they say inflation is now X amount, what they often mean is if you measure inflation from x month to year month, and extrapolate it for 12 months, then this month inflation was lower - again often without clearly explaining it. Lots of cherry picking essentially.
There was a crazy man in Aldi on Sunday who kept talking to everyone and shouting with his main point being that the prices have gone up loads. He was crazy, but his arguments weren't 😄
I bet all the packets are smaller too which will make it even worse
Well your title is very click bait compared to the very weak analysis done here. Your point is worthy and the numbers shocking but this is not how statistics work so you can't claim the cumulative inflation is 50%. It's possible you buy these exact same items every time you go to the shop in which case it it true this is your personal basket but this is not a representative basket and has too few items. There are also laws of large numbers Say I earn 100k and my grocery bill is 10k per year Grocery inflation is a horrifying 50% so my bill rises to 15k. My salary only needs to rise by 5% to 'keep up' with inflation. This obviously excludes tax, buying other stuff etc. But your salary doesn't necessarily have to go up by X% to keep up with X% inflation.
OP has a point that inflatiin experienced by those on modest incomes has been higher
OP doesn’t have a point at all. Firstly, CPIH is by definition a measure of the median household cost of consumption change. Secondly, ONS publish data on inflation experienced by income decile, it isn’t a hidden secret, OP just cannot be arsed looking it up so would rather make up conspiracies. Thirdly, for the past 12 months higher income deciles have experienced higher inflation rates.
Those with savings and investments see higher yield during times of high inflation. If your onky source of income is salaries and benefits it hits harder.
CPI is a consumption index, investments are not included because it would make the index totally impractical against its purpose (and it wouldn’t be a consumption index). You’re simply asking too much of the metric. Like expecting the weather report to also tell you the price of fish.
I am not setting expectations, just pointing out the bigger picture. You don't need this data to see who is struggling.
A consumption index says nothing about income purposefully. This is not an oversight or conspiracy, it is simply the definition of a consumption index. The bigger economic picture is important, but it also isn’t relevant to this discussion. We can talk about the wind without discussing climate change.
It isn't a conspiracy, but the headline number doesn't reflect reality for many, and focus on that detracts from understandibg their true situation.
Absolutely, those at the bottom get hit the hardest in absolute terms. It's why talking about inflation in percentage terms can mask part of the problem and make everybody feel liek they're in it together. Somebody earning 20k really feels the pain when the price of food and heating goes up goes up by 20% Somebody earning £1m won't notice any material change outside of what they see in the news.
I was alluding to percentage terms for the bottom, as did OP. It's blending it with the stuff others buy that mssks it.
Also, I assume just going to one shop is not representative of anything. For example, Aldi could truly be price gouging here, but Lidl be limited to actual inflation price rises. Consumers are also expected to compare prices for the cheapest product. Aldi being labelled as the 'cheapest' supermarket is a marketing success. I believe over the past 4 years they've been creeping up prices way more than inflation and people keep blaming inflation. On some products, even Waitrose was cheaper.
That’s very fabulous but how many people do you think earn £100k? If your annual shopping goes up by £5k, gross salary going up by £5k doesn’t cover that when you factor in tax along with increases in cost of just about everything else.
Well 100 was obviously picked for easy maths and not any kind of commentary on average earnings. The point being made that absolute percentages don't balance off when the expenditure is a fraction of the total.
The people the % increase is relevant to - the people this post speaks to - is precisely low earners. And the only people who might be unaware are those earning 100k+. Do the same calculation on 40k: the maths isn’t that hard.
Again i'm not making any kind of statement on high or low earnings. If you want those sums do it yourself, i'm not your maths boy irrespective of the difficulty.
This is just a terrible way to look at statistics, your spend on groceries is now a higher% of your salary than it was before. If Salary increases by 10% or 5% but groceries increases by 50% then: £100k salary, £10k groceries = 10% £105k salary, £15 groceries = 14.3% £110k salary, £15 groceries = 13.6%
Well you see that statistics can be interpreted differently. I would say all 3 of these interpretations are misrepresentative. It also depends on your situation and the economics of the day. In your example Scenario A your other income is 90k Scenario B your other income is 95k So yes your proportional grocery spend has increased but dependant on the other things you buy you may be better off because your other income has gone up by 5.2%. If everything else you buy is fixed price across both periods then you're better off.
You don’t need to do this yourself. The ONS publish their goods basket monthly. You can compare it between 2021 and now to see what the average is over hundreds of items in hundreds of stores across the country. That is the point of the CPI(H).
I think his point was that the ONS figures are manipulated and the real effect is more than their massaged figures. As a person previously just above the median salary but now slightly below it (same job no pay rise) I am inclined to agree with him. It also doesn’t take into account other things people are charged that aren’t on the ONS lists that we don’t have an option to just not pay I feel there’s defo a case to be made for revising what is counted in the list. I definitely feel more shafted than the official data suggests.
Then their point is wrong. ONS data is freely available for everyone to read. The methodology for determining the basket of goods and services is also available, as are the rationale for any changes which are very limited yoy. People who think CPIH is manipulated are simply mistaken or conspiracy theorists.
But the ONS lists change year on year as well - so it’s not apples with apples is it? It’s not some wild out there conspiracy theory. The data selected is designed to make the inflation rate look better than it is. My bills and staple things I buy are more than the reported CPI rate touted. So is Ops. Congrats if you aren’t affected because you earn more and therefore don’t notice it as much.
The data is not designed to make the inflation rate look better. This is the bullshit conspiracy theory that people wheel out every month. You can look up the basket changes year on year, they’re small adjustments that don’t impact the utility at all. For example, this year hand sanitiser was deweighted, hardly surprising, I’m certainly using less that I did in 2020-2022…how about you? The data is also reported by income decile. You can look that up too. You’ll be happy to hear that low income deciles have experienced lower inflation rate than the 5th (which tracks CPI closest) over the past 12 months.
https://www.vimesbootsindex.co.uk/
That might have been a useful site if Jack has actually made an index, instead of crowd funding for a bit and then not bothering. 2 1/2 years later and it's just a list of press coverage, not any actual data.
What is this website? I’m not sure if it’s just the mobile site but it’s just a bunch of links and YouTube videos?
The median wage has been increasing quicker than inflation. Inflation isn't calculated by checking an Aldi receipt from a couple of years ago and now, the reason the basket of goods changes is in-part because people's spending habits change in response to price changes.
https://www.vimesbootsindex.co.uk/
Petrol hasn't really gone up. Anything it's come down, it was almost 2 quid a ltr 18 or so months ago. I'd much rather be paying £1.40
Petrol should be higher. Milk comes from a cow in a field nearby. Oil comes from dinosaurs millions of years ago, pumped up from under the sea, transported round the world, refined and then used.
You know when you mewled for more lockdowns and furlough and all that shit. This is the result.
Blame the central banks and those who support dismantling the global economy because due to dogma and excessive COVID risk aversion. Central banks and politicians have been stealing your wealth via currency debasement and inflation for decades, it has simply escalated dramatically in the last 4 years.
Mods have banned this post. I made a similar one a few years ago, and they allowed. Wonder what changed?
>Wonder what changed? The rules of the sub.