This just isn't true at all. Developed economies rely more on oil than less developed ones. Plus, more of that is driven by prices at source because in undeveloped countries delivery effort is a big price component. Here is some context on the volatility of oil: https://www.thebalance.com/oil-price-history-3306200
10y ago we were at almost twice the price and developing countries weren't "on strike full-retard" or seeing oil driven defaults.
The closest to a country really being screwed recently by oil prices have been exporters, especially Russia which depends on higher prices to balance its budgets and had been harmed byow prices.
That's not to say that oil prices "aren't important". It's just that every industry/economy/etc had been forced to learn to weather price volatility. That's. Why there is such a developed futures etc market.
Depends on how you define "on strike full retard", at least where I live (Indonesia), it is spot on.
Some context: Indonesian govt. subsidizes fuel to quite a large degree, up to ~50% of relative to petrol prices. Over the years, they've been trying to draw down, but it's a touchy subject.
Last year, ~10% of state budget was spent on fuel subsidies (to give us a sense of scale).
Thanks for cluing me into the interesting history of Indonesian subsidies. Here's a good analysis for English readers [1]. It looks like fuel subsidies were very high 5y ago, when oil was at 2x today, and have come off significantly since.
I'd argue that this is exactly the sort of price stabilization mechanism that makes oil volatility less scary it sounds on its face. The government is centralizing (and, more controversially, socializing) the financial cost of creating internal price stability. This is actually pretty common, and I'm not sure 10% of budget (at peak) is as outsized as it sounds. In the USA, this takes the form of buying and releasing oil from the strategic reserve, but also in a mountain of foreign policy (read: military) spending on maintaining stable supply lines for energy trading.
Fuel subsidies in a lot of developing countries are politically weird. They mostly benefit wealthier people, but are most ardently supported by poorer people. It's difficult to disentangle.
People like free stuff, and after some time, it becomes expected.
Moreover, think of it in the opposite direction. Imagine a getting hit with a 10% tax increase even if a richer guy gets 15%. Him being taxed more doesn't necessarily make that 10 feel much better.
Oil prices were double what they are today in 2014, and triple in the depths of the 2008 recession (before falling to roughly current levels in 2009). They were roughly half current levels in the 2000 recession. They were roughly equal during the oil crisis in the 1970s.
Sudden shocks to oil prices seem to be able to cause recessions, like the 250% increase in 1973 or the 200% increase from 2007-2008, capping off a 500% (!) increase from 2002-2008. But these are a lot bigger than the 50% increase postulated here. We've withstood 50% increases (1994, 2004, 2016) or even 150% increases (dot-com boom) with no ill effects.
Oil prices were 50% cheaper not too long ago, and the food wasn't significantly cheaper, so I can't see how more expensive oil will make the food prices "skyrocket".
Yes, and in a prisoners' dilemma with thousands of players, someone is surely going to defect and sell their stuff cheaper to undercut the competition. I don't think I've ever heard about large scale collusion to fix prices in food industry, and I won't hold my breath for it this time.
