A lot of commenters are obsessed with just finding money. You can't eat money. You can't build a house out of it (advisably).<p>Money is only as valuable as the amount of <i>stuff</i> in an economy. More money with the same amount of stuff is just inflation. The Pound does not need more inflation. Money and trade are only valuable in so much as they aid exchange and efficiency.<p>On a real, practical-level Brexit made England <i>materially poorer</i>. There are a lot of export commodities they no longer have a market for. And there are a lot of markets they can no longer import from cheaply.<p>You can do what you want to make the distribution more equal, but it can also be true that the pie is smaller for everyone.
Funny, central bankers advocating for wage price restraints are in effect calling for price controls (on labour). Except when anyone calls for price controls in any other context (goods, commodities, services) they are generally shot down by mainstream economists because they create market distortions which eventually leads to unwanted side effects.<p>Odd little disparity there.
> Pill was more direct. He said there’s a “reluctance to accept that yes, we’re all worse off and we all have to take our share.”<p>They should look into taxing the various British Overseas Territories which usually top lists of tax havens across the world [1].<p>I am not sure if the regular British public is just ignorant of the existence of these, or prefers to run with the limited set of facts that their Conservative government (now in its 13th year) is presenting to them. The Brexit shitshow seems to suggest the former.<p>----------------------------------------<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/09/uk-overseas-territories-top-list-of-worlds-leading-tax-havens" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/09/uk-overseas...</a>
John Authers, a Bloomberg columnist, discusses this a bit in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-26/uk-inflation-boe-s-chief-economist-fails-find-the-right-words" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-26/uk-inf...</a> and thinks his friend got a bit of a raw deal here in the public reaction. If you like Matt Levine's columns, you might find Authers's newsletter worth a look.
You can only financially engineer and money print your way for so long. Once living standards and real wages fall far enough, UK costs will get low enough to attract foreign investment again. A very educated workforce that speaks English with a good time zone will eventually be attractive at a low enough price.<p>The problems fall squarely on the British themselves, as it always does in democracies. They elected representatives who then made choices reflecting the collective will. Scape goat all you want but the answer is actually producing things of value that people around the world want to buy. Other than that it’s shell games.
>A tight jobs market and strong corporate pricing power means that firms can pass on costs in higher prices and workers can demand wage increases, fueling inflation further<p>Maybe it's better to curb the strong corporate pricing power instead?
"Have you tried kill all the poor?"<p><a href="https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/owI7DOeO_yg</a>
> So somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether higher wages or passing the energy costs through on to customers. And what we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off, and we all have to take our share, to try and pass that cost on to one of our compatriots.<p>That pass-the-parcel game is generating inflation and that part of inflation can persist. How much bargaining power and pricing power exists for different actors in the value chain in the corporate side and in the labor market?<p>That's the actual quote<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-26/uk-inflation-boe-s-chief-economist-fails-find-the-right-words?leadSource=uverify%20wall" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-26/uk-inf...</a>
I have a couple of naive questions about this, that hopefully someone with more knowledge can answer:<p>1. If the central problem is the price of imports (i.e. natural gas) outpacing exports (service sector), is this problem a downstream effect of Brexit closing off valuable markets? This seems obvious to me, but I don't see any mention of Brexit as a causal factor in the BOE Chief Economists comments (perhaps I missed it), and so am wondering if I'm overestimating Brexit's impact on the UK economy.<p>2. If Brexit is a relevant, and significant factor, in theory, can post-Brexit trade negotiations increase the export sector to offset this?<p>3. Assuming the natural gas is primarily used for building energy, is it easy for the UK to transition to alternative thermal energy sources (i.e. switch to electric generated from non-gas sources, heat pumps)?
I've always thought of the UK as a very efficient user of energy, like most European countries, due to it's high density and stricter efficiency standards relative to the US and Canada<i>, and am surprised the natural gas price increase seems to be framed as a relatively permanent problem that the UK is powerless to stop.<p></i> To be fair, I suppose a huge challenge is the older building stock can't easily use lower capacity electric heating, or heat pumps due to the historical reliance of thermal mass over insulation, but there are established ways to fix this, and shouldn't be an issue for modern buildings.
Weird to see a news article pop up here after seeing it in Murdoch-run press and TV. It's usually the other way around but this time it was more than 24 hours.
How about they start the "acceptance" at the BOE. Cut their salaries.<p>Then, cut all MP salaries.<p>Then, cut government employee salaries.<p>Then, tax the wealth of the rich (and not just income).<p>When these noble people "accept" poverty themselves, that ought to bring inflation down.
All that free stuff from the government is expensive.<p>"the British people need to accept they are poorer instead of seeking to claw back a historic drop in living standards after a jump in inflation."