Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

In the UK it's pretty much that pre and post covid are just different worlds economically.

It feels as if almost everything is 50-100% more expensive. Takeaways, cinema, restaurants, general labour (home repairs, materials, etc), the pub, etc.

I don't rent but people tell me that rent is skyrocketing also.

Government (local and national) seems to have different goals that make a lot of these issues worse.

For example, policies that get landlords to sell up, policies that make running a small business much more expensive and difficult.

It's usually all through side effects but it just fucks with the market.

My local council charges more for diesel vehicles to park. Makes sense right? Except ~100% of vans are diesel fuelled, so now if you want a tradesman to fix your gutter that costs a shit load more for essentially no reason.

There's also a clean air zone which means any older van has to pay £12.50 just to drive in at all. Not into Soho, into the entire 30 mile wide city. What's an older van you might ask? Nine years old. Yes, 9.

Literally an hour of wages gone, again for essentially no reason.

Is any of that in the inflation statistics? Probably not, it'll just show that people are either doing their own maintenance (less economically efficient) or leaving stuff to rot.

Policymakers are completely out of touch with the people who actually get shit done. Brexit is a nice scapegoat but in reality we just have ridiculously overbearing regulation.

Brexit undoubtedly raised costs for many business sectors in the UK though I'll grant other things are going on too.

Restaurants are in trouble everywhere.

Wage and ingredient costs are part of it but I think the delivery economy doesn't really work for them. Everywhere I go I see restaurants have made major accommodations to the delivery business. For instance in Collegetown there are several restaurants that have put up supergraphics covering multiple windows in mostly 中文 that are branded for a delivery service based in the mainland and have some exotic and interesting (to me) foods like when they cook a whole fish eyes and all it serve it to you whole. I'm not 100% sure what the relationship between these restaurants are, if I can order those items off the menu if I show up in person, how easy it is going to be be, etc.

For a while Uber was offering half-price taxi rides to people who lived in major cities but they can't afford to do that anymore and I think the same is happening with food delivery and of course it is too expensive but if it puts stress on restaurants in general it will make it expensive to sit down and eat or just to pick up the food yourself.

Low restaurant/food prices have always been contingent on having a large population of people willing to work a very hard job for very low pay during times of the day when most people would rather not be working.

They were on the rise throughout the 2010s (due to changes in population pyramid due to fertility rate changes), albeit it at a slower pace before Covid, but Covid shook things up in the sense that it provided a lot of activation energy to those that wanted to get out of food service jobs, creating a more rapid shift in prices (and/or lower quality).

Things are, in fact, not 50-100% more expensive though.

You can cherry-pick individual items that are, though, and the ones that have changed a lot get more attention.

I'm glad things are going better where you live. Where I live:

Gas: 2020 = $2.36 a gallon 2024 = $4.69 a gallon

Celery: 2020 $0.90/head 2024 $1.50/head

Arby's Half Pound Roast Beef Sandwich: 2020 $5.50 2024 $8

Gas is a special case but it’s worth noting that your numbers went from a bit above the national average to significantly above the national average.

I’m not sure where you got your celery numbers but produce prices are very swingy over a year

Arby’s prices have risen, although, amusingly at a much slower rate than almost any other major fast food chain

>Gas: 2020 = $2.36 a gallon 2024 = $4.69 a gallon

This must be due to increased state and local taxes.

https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts

May 2019 is ~$2.70 and May 2024 is ~$3.70, a 37% increase, as opposed to a 100% increase for where you live.

I used May 2019 because there is no use in comparing May 2020 or any other part of 2020 due to COVID supply and demand disruption as well as seasonal differences.

> This must be due to increased state and local taxes

I don't know if it matters all that much why prices are increasing for everything, whether it's inflation, corporate greed, new/increased taxes, or whatever else

The fact is people are getting squeezed from a lot of directions, and meanwhile we're reading about record corporate profits, many companies are doing massive layoffs, and raises aren't keeping up with expenses

Picking one particular item hit by a tax in one locality is not a very useful anecdote for the general narrative

No, it just feels that way, because some things are actually up 40%, whilst other things are just less accessible in general or have been subjected to fees which can't be captured as a percentage rate.

The tradesman example I give is one of those. It's not x% more expensive to get something done, it's more like, the small jobs are now uneconomical to bother with at all, so you do it yourself to a lower standard which takes you time. Hence it feels as if the economy is doing worse, because you can't get as much done.

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