Inflation aside, does anyone think that they’ve really screwed with society with the lockdowns, the money printing, the vaccine mandates, and the work from home mandates?
Everything feels very broken. Nobody wants to work. Even people who have been asked to come to the office are screwing off at least 1-2 days of the week and no one is able to do a thing.
A massive group of people are essentially walking around with zero faith in their government. If they’re not hostile, they’re apathetic.
Money is still completely wonky. All older economic indicators have stopped meaning anything because money has stopped meaning all that much.
Healthcare feels even more broken than before. You’ve got more deaths than ever and chronic sufferers are the worst hit.
I feel very pessimistic when I look at the world right now. Everything feels very chaotic and I don’t see a way out of the disorder.
The world was just very different pre-2020. It's all just gone phone call nonsense. Everyone is slacking off, productivity is through the floor, endless queues for everything, shortages, public transport use way down, etc.
I haven't even had a proper full time job since then because as far as I can tell literally 0 work from office jobs exist any more. They just went extinct.
The idea of even using an indicator like inflation to capture this is weird because there's been a qualitiative, not quantitative, change in what life is. It's not just "before but a different % of things".
I can’t say why. But work seems to have no “gravity”.
Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off.
Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.
Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log in from home. And no one seems to care or even mind.
It's funny that you haven't actually said that less work is getting done. It just sounds like you are saying that "working from home" is equivalent to "slacking off", even if you didn't intend it to come out that way.
Maybe people were always "slacking off" at their jobs, they just had to work harder to hide it when people were in the office?
I posit something similar in a sibling comment, because productivity indicators have not significantly dropped and I doubt the impending recession has anything to do with a newfound collective laziness.
I've been on calls where half a dozen people are trying to find someone to complete some repetitive technical task that isn't easily given to automation. I suspect the idea was to find some poor junior type person to take on the task (preferably in a "best-shored" location). Typically it was me, a senior, who would say, "let me put on some headphones and listen to music, and I'll just work on it". But if I wasn't in those calls, I wonder how many more person-hours would have been spent on something that would take me an afternoon at the most to complete.
All that is to say is that it seemed like there are tons of people caught in a Bullshit Job situation where the job seems to be mainly trying to foist the work off on someone else. And I suspect that a lot of the work they're trying to find owners for is of highly questionable value in the first place.
This was long before the pandemic too, but it does seem like an awakening that other people had in pandemic times.
> Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.
That sounds mostly like a good thing. Turns out that killing oneself for maximizing productivity wasn't a smart move, or even necessary for things to work ok.
> What I care about is that when I go to book a driving test, I can get one. I could do that pre-2020. I now can't.
Sounds like a supply and demand problem. The marker solution would be to increase wages for driving testers and attract more candidates to these positions.
The alternative was mass unemployment, it would have taken two decades to re-prime the pump. So the alternative to such a large shock was either ~5 years of inflation / stagflation largely caused by supply side issues (can't get a driving test, can't get employees, can't get something shipped from China, etc), or a two decade (a la 30s / 40s) rebuilding the economy from scratch.
And (as a side issue) you shouldn't be surprised that large scale uncontained shocks lead to war. Look at the drought in Syria from 2006 to 2010. Look at the largely global economic shock in the 30s. If you want to see what a systemic supply shock can do to economies at scale have a look at the complete collapse in the lead up to 1177 BC.
So a large systemic shock like COVID will need to be "paid for", and the choices are "a very big bill" or "a catastrophic bug bill". I suspect that you feel that life was fine pre COVID and you were happy with your lot. And now you're not, you wish it was back the way it was (e.g. you can book a test). So since we had interventions (most "imposed" on us), post hoc ergo propter hoc the interventions are bad.
So my suggestion is to do a root cause analysis and realise that humans (both individually and collectively) are bad at dealing with black swans, even when we know it will come (sooner or later). And secondly, even if you don't like this human short coming and you wish that someone would just "get a grip" of the situation so you don't have to deal with something you don't like, it might help to have a bit more empathy towards people trying to help.
So then the only viable alternative to collapse (a la 1177BC), or the circling the drain that was 30s hyperinflation, is stagflation (which is somewhat similar to the 70s energy crisis).
So the question is can the UK handle it better than MT did in the early 80s. It took about 8 years last time, has monetary / fiscal understanding improved in any practical sense since then? Will the UK have another George Soros to inflict reality on the powers that be? Watch this space...
This is pure anecdote. Any evidence of this besides personal experience? I've had a WFH job since before COVID and everyone seems very engaged in what they're doing.
It feels like that among my friends. Our situations are comfortable but there's nothing to look forward to, so we just coast. It's not like we can afford a house or any sort of retirement. Everyone seems quite cynical, but not willing to kill the mood by talking about it.
Well... Faith in economy and money is falling down. Hopefully society realize what is really important in live. I thing we live in changing times. Which is interesting actually and I'm really surprised how we adopt to the new values.
But yes... Lockdowns are major reason of so called "inflation". Caused by few corporates. But I'm not sure if majority reflects that.
The young will be expected pick up the tab for the old, despite owning none of the assets.
It would not be a surprise if there are policies announced to further tax the young to give 'Granny' more free money off her bills (the existing winter fuel allowance is not means tested), and further free transport round major cities (over 60s travel London free). Then there's the echoes of the lockdown nightmare, mass punishment of the young so the old could feel safer.
The response to any complaints about this generational vampirism is always of course; "you'll be old one day". Inheritance is rare to appear, all too often you hear that Granny has given it all to the local cat sanctuary. Patience is running thin and apathy is higher than ever.
If you're young, this country actively punishes and steals from you, then tells you to stop complaining. Finding hope in anyone under 60 is a tough task.
We already see indirect youth tax in the USA in the form of social security - millennials will never see the benefits from their life-long contributions that the current retired age group is seeing. As it is currently benefits will decline 22% in 2034, and even further by the time millennials hit 65+.
In the UK national insurance is 13.5% from the employee and 15.5% from the employer…
And all you get is £170 a week pension if you are lucky.
So the social security equivalent in the UK comes to about 28% of the salary of most UK workers.
It does only kick in if you are paid more than £240 a week for the employee part and £170 for the employer part, and does taper off for the employee to 3.5% for income above £4300 a month but for all intents and purposes this hold true for most workers.
A Mix of Brexit, an aging population, massive underinvestment in basically everything, covid mishandling and huge debt means the UK is around year 0 of a lost decade. I will leave if I can.
I moved from the UK to [redacted]. While I could not predict the pandemic nor the war in Ukraine I did expect things to get worse in the UK post-Brexit which is why when the UK voted to leave back in 2016 my wife and I started planning to move. It took a couple of years to get things all sorted and we moved in August 2018.
We are actually back in the UK this week visiting family who asked if we miss living here and my wife and I just looked at each other and said "nope!" in unison. It is hard to explain it in a short post here but the UK just doesn't feel "like home" to me anymore.
I am not saying [redacted] is perfect. But our quality of life is much higher in [redacted] than it was in the UK and we are both very happy we followed through and moved.
I often make comments I feel I need to, and later succumb to the stupid social network reaction of "oh no 3 people downvoted it, surely that means 3 people hate me and no one agrees".
I recently went to a small event for a friend, and among the 30-40 young professionals there, this was the resounding mood: the country is fucked and only getting worse, is there a way out? Just generally no one expects things to get better. Standard of living is going down the drain, building stability by buying a house comes with absurd cost.
I think we are heading for a tipping point. Public services are probably already past a point where staff quitting is piling more work on those left, resulting in more people quitting. I suspect there will be a terminal snowball which guts the NHS at least and leaves it unable to function (by design of the Tories, of course).
I suspect the brain drain will be similar. Young people don't want to live in some tax haven, they want a country that functions. Brexit has made it harder, but people will find a way eventually. People were talking Canada, the Netherlands, etc... (Notably for here, very much not the US which is seen as having all of the same problems the UK has).
And our political system basically guarantees the same people will be in charge until Jan 2025?! 2015 me would never have believed how rapidly things could fall apart.
Past success is not a good predictor. Probably the Roman senators at the end of the Roman Empire also thought "oh well, we've been dragging our feet lately, but somehow things will work out".
I would say the most likely outcome is a further diminishing of the UKs international importance, together with some risk of Scotland breaking apart.
Since this is also related to higher energy prices, do you think the invasion on Ukraine is also a contributing factor? Although if that were the case, we’d also see as high of inflation in other European countries?
That's definitely a contributor, but, as you say, it's generally worse in the UK than in other large European countries. This whole thing is a bit of a perfect storm for the UK.
I'm curious, do we actually have higher taxes than most other countries and if so in which specific areas?
Personally a well paid individual no dependants I find the Tory focus on cutting taxes ridiculous but I'm aware I'm ignorant of how we compare to other countries.
I think this sums up the UK: European style taxes, US Style public services.
Cynicism aside for a minute, I think we have a real issue in the UK with a diminishing tax base: fewer and fewer people contribute and they have to contribute more and more of their incomes and everyone gets less and less services.
Hmm I'm not sure it's fair to consider student loan repayment a tax. It's limited and many people will pay it off fast. I presume you're based in London if you're on £95k and still have outstanding student loads?
Moving to a European country with less industry and a moderate climate closer to the Med would blunt energy costs for someone (lower energy demand = less energy spend).
I've recently started the move over to the Netherlands. The things that were keeping me in the UK (the last vestiges of our socialist governmental policies) have been torn to shreds by the current Tory government. I've also lost any hope that the British public will try to fight for it back. It feels like people are accepting a slip back into feudalism with open arms.
I live in the north of England where temperature varies from 38F in Jan to 57F in August. It's pretty chilly for me, so I tend to spend a considerable amount of gas throughout the year. I'm renting a house, so deep work like insulation gets complicated.
My point is that even with a comfortable salary, I will feel ~£600/month in energy. I can only fear for people that earn much less than me.
People living in the UK already know the north is chilly, no need to quantify it.
I have the impression that the overwhelming majority of HN is from the US, and "chilly" can mean different things depending where you're from.
As an American on holiday in the UK, I appreciate the Fahrenheit.
My impression of the readership is that it depends on the time of day. When I was in Vietnam, I would wake up to US centric posts full of comments. When I wake up early on the East Coast of the US (~6:30 am) I see more comments from Europe/UK. By mid afternoon, most of the posters seem to be from the US or at least the Americas.
I base this on about 5 years of daily HN reading. I infer the posters’ locations from spelling, grammar, but most often their own admission. Nonetheless, this is just anecdata.
Used to be that Brits commonly used a dual temperature system, cold weather in Centigrade (brr, -5 outside), hot weather in Fahrenheit (phew, 85 today, what a scorcher!).
People from Europe likely already have a vague idea of what the temp is like in northern parts of it, and 45% of HN is from US according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3298905
“ It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday […] it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. [...] The eyeless crature at the other table swallowed it fanatically. passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Syme, too-in some more double complex way, involving doublethink-Syme, swallow it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
Hope is in such short supply in large parts of the UK that false hope, demonstrably false hope, and even doublespeak-esque cynically lying false hope can take hold.
And so a chunk of the masses vacillate between "I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything."[0] and "Game over man, Game Over."[1]
Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy.
Seems much of Europe is still chained to LNG, and that demand is even wreaking havoc in countries which have been previously quite self-sustained, or really don't use LNG much themselves - with Norway being a good example.
Europe is going to come out strong out of this whole mess.
The political unity so quickly after the start of the war was unexpected (and admirable).
Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all), solar panels will be everywhere, and the continued flex-work-from-home revolution will have created an enormous amount of extra time for everybody. They'll be comfy in their sustainable homes and healthy cities, those few years of inflation a memory only.
It's a tough transition, that eventually every country needs to make, but Europe will be ahead of the rest of the world by miles.
And in the US, 10 years from now, the next gas price spike will again have people start to whine (yet again), we'll still be coughing on fumes when dropping our kids of at their school, the energy grid will continue to be unreliable in face of every minor or major natural disaster, and we'll wonder why nothing really materially has changed (and then blame the government).
> Ten years from now, Europeans will drive electric (if they'll drive at all)
Most cars sold in Europe aren't electric: only 13%. Average car life in Europe is 11 years or something like that. So, no, ten years from now Europeans won't be all driving electric, far from it. Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural: so, yes, they'll still be driving (or using horses). People enjoying the public transports in cities are a minority.
> Also something like 2/3rd of all europeans live in suburbs or rural
European Suburb != American suburb. I live in the suburbs of Paris, and i have two regular train lines (as in 15 minutes cadence in off peak times) within walking distance. The vast majority of commuters in and around Paris use public transit, even when they live in small towns of a few hundred/thousand inhabitants (because even those tend to have train stations). Car trips still exist, but there are massive new projects to improve public transit even more (multiple hundreds of km of new metro lines in the suburbs, multiple new tram lines in the suburbs, etc.).
Given the current uncertainty that people will be able to heat their homes in the winter, the threat of widespread power outages, and the rising cost of living across the board: No, it won't come out stronger. Once the first blackout hits, support for economic sanctions against Russia will evaporate, and people will demand a return to their previous living standards. The idea of a green fantasyland without cars is fiction.
The Russophobe Eastern Europeans will absolutely stand by the sanctions. Everything is Russia's fault, they should be made to pay instead of us buckling under their blackmail. Pro-Russian elements in those countries will be loud but are IMHO unlikely to win except maybe in Bulgaria and Hungary (where they are already in power).
Western Europe, we'll see. Germany seems the most likely to crack with their appeasement bullshit and shameless ex-politicians. Fingers crossed they don't.
The price to drive an electric car has spiked recently.
We are in this shit because of Putins war (75% of the blame), Europes general hatred of having a military (15%, say), and finaly Biden not being willing to use military force directly to stop Russia.
We can't do anything about the first, it will take decades to solve the second, but if Biden was willing to take of the gloves, Donbas and Crimera + a good chunk of Southern Russia could be in Ukranian hands come spring.
Then we could open up for their gas fields and end the problem.
Russia will try to push the narrative that this will mean a direct confrontation between them and NATO, but having seen how they do in Ukraine, this hardly matters.
Yes Russia have nukes, and some of their rockets no doubt work, but this scenarios does not trigger their criteria for use of nukes.
While Russia is for sure to blame for taking the final action by launching the war, let's not pretend the US hasn't been meddling in Ukraine for years across multiple administrations. I'd argue that in fact we can do something about "the first." Ukraine is a proxy war between Russia and the US, one that has been brewing since at least 2008.
Only a fool believes a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO/US is a good outcome or would improve the situation. Also let's not fall into the trap of believing propaganda about military performance from either side, it will take years for an honest assessment to come out.
It doesn't sound right to suggest there are criteria for using nukes. The only thing that needs to happen is someone with them decides to use them and does.
>Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, who now serves as deputy chairman of the country's security council, outlined four ways that Russia could be "entitled to" use its nuclear arsenal—even against a nation that is only using conventional weapons.
>Number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile.
The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies," Medvedev said Saturday, according to The Guardian.
"The third is an attack on a critical infrastructure that will have paralyzed our nuclear deterrent forces.
And the fourth case is when an act of aggression is committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons."
I don't doubt they have outlined when they will use them, I doubt that I trust humans to always follow a plan. Humans sometimes behave unpredictably, or even irrationally.
> Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy.
Or investment into basic insulation and house upgrades. Single glazing and simple brick is still very common in the UK. Many houses could use much less energy if they didn't lose lots of it through the windows and ceilings in the first place.
Just imagine how much the politicians suck: Science has given them the solution for the energy problem, science has showed how to even make it economically, and has done that already years ago. All politics would have to do is implemented. But they cannot even do that ...
Hydro isn't available everywhere and wind as well as solar are unreliable. Energy storage in the required dimension is an unsolved problem too. So whatever you're trying to say here is unfounded.
If energy costs a lot, then anyone who can offer to sell energy production obviously has an attractive product. The problem as I see it is that what's needed is plannable capacity. While there is always need for more capacity, what we need most is capacity that works regardless of whether there is water in the rivers or wind in the turbines. And that's not easy. Biomass and Biogas for example.
And this has a very important implication. For home owners who're currently deciding which heating technology to replace an oil or gas furnace with.
Biomass and Biogas will be needed urgently in the near future to supply powerplants (of utility order of magnitude) that can then stabilize the electrical grid against the fluctuations that are going to be caused by more and more wind and solar power.
The way I see it - as enticing as it may be - to replace an oil/gas furnace with a wood pellet powered one in our current situation is the wrong choice in the long-term.
The prices for electricity will rise further, yes, but the crucial role of biomass and biogas as one means to stabilize the grid will IMO lead to even greater price increases for the latter.
Wish I was optimistic like you.
The other possibility is that there will be more coal (Germany, Poland, Czech Republic are already heavy producers). Norway may cut EU and UK from their electricity production (it seems to be #1 topic there and there were already articles comparing current network with NAZI-era plans on NRK).
etc.
True. But 5-years ago this national security reliance on foreign gas prices was well known, and little was done in the intervening time. The worry is that when the current crisis subsides that inaction will yet again fall back into favor.
The solutions are, in part:
- National gas storage reserve (to buffet price/supply spikes somewhat).
- Expansion of green energy.
- Programs to reduce usage (e.g. home and business improvements).
Luckily for the UK extremely efficient heat pump based heating/cooling solutions that offer greater than 100% efficiency exist[0]. It is just a matter of the political will to covert away from gas to electricity and then retrofitting homes.
COP is not efficiency. Efficiency is what you did / what you had the resources to do in an ideal world.
That makes thermal chemical heating 20-50% efficient, thermal electric heating 10-30% and heat pumps 50-70% efficient (depending on where you draw the boundaries).
You could also draw the limit at reduced carnot efficiency rather than reversibility, in which case heat pumps can be close to 100%
This is such pointless pedantry. Heat pumps having an efficiency greater than 1/100% is well known, well publicized, and you're trying to make some artificial distinction here that added nothing to this thread/context/discussion.
I won't be further responding to this sub-topic, since it has nothing at all to do with the UK's inflation/energy prices. Plus frankly I feel like you're trying to confuse people rather than inform, I'd point people to the Department of Energy link above if they want to understand the benefit that modern heat pumps could offer to energy usage.
Characterizing them as >100% efficient is poor communication. It doesn't map to any intuitive understanding, it does not communicate anything about how much heating could be done with that energy (thus leading to people believing absurd claims), and it does not map to either the colloquial or technical meaning of efficiency in any other context.
Efficiency as a concept doesn't go over 100% and just because confusing and misleading explanations are the norm doesn't mean they should continue.
> It doesn't map to any intuitive understanding, it does not communicate anything about how much heating could be done with that energy
But that's exactly what it does. It's technically wrong, but communicates the understanding that you put 100% of electrical energy into it and get 250-450% of heating energy for your home out of it, as opposed to 100% with resistive heating. That some of the electrical energy comes out of the air outside or from the ground is irrelevant for most people.
No it doesn't. "400%" gives you no indication that the upper bound is 800%.
And failing to communicate that the heat comes from elsewhere is condescending and leads to misunderstandings. It also fails to communicate that it's harder to move the heat when it is colder.
We have a perfectly valid term that does what yoh want without lying and without anti-education in the name of making it 'easier' which is coefficient of performance. You could even give it a different name to `void the scary word if you want, just don't call it efficiency because it's not.
> gives you no indication that the upper bound is 800%.
But it isn't? For e.g. outside sheds (heated to 7°C) the COP can theoretically go up to 27. For solar panels, the highest theoretical efficiency is well below 100% and the bound isn't communicated.
> It also fails to communicate that it's harder to move the heat when it is colder.
For heating that's less the case, but the efficiency of e.g. solar panels also varies depending on the temperature. That's not exclusive for heat pumps (although much more extreme there).
> You could even give it a different name to `void the scary word if you want, just don't call it efficiency because it's not.
Few people know what Coefficient of Performance means. If I give choose a new name, even less people will understand it. I try to either put efficiency in quotation marks or explain the concept, but efficiency maps (in the sense of energy I care about in and out) pretty well.
I think anti-education is too harsh, I'd describe it more as a white lie. It's the same as saying Mac & Linux systems don't get malware or saying in school maths that you can't take the square root of -1.
Wrong, but correct enough for understanding the point and allowing useful reasoning.
> But it isn't? For e.g. outside sheds (heated to 7°C) the COP can theoretically go up to 27. For solar panels, the highest theoretical efficiency is well below 100% and the bound isn't communicated.
That's just another way of saying that framing it as efficiency and disregarding that you're moving heat from a colder reservoir is incredibly misleading. Now the marketing department can put a giant "1300% efficient*" sticker on the dual use heat pump even though it's worse for heating to 24C. A heat pump is fundamentally moving heat. It's in the name. (Heat created + heat moved) / work in does not map to an intuitive or technical notion of efficiency, and framing it that way is encouraging a mental model which is not just quantitatively off, but fundamentally wrong. It's also a distinction that is subtle enough that it is very hard to see while you are confused. This is the almost worst kind communication failure (maybe just after using a dimensionless number for insulation, or using kilo for kibi) because it's so hard to correct. It leaks into other domains and destroys communication, allowing marketers to lie, and requiring a constant treadmill of new terms to fix.
> For solar panels, the highest theoretical efficiency is well below 100% and the bound isn't communicated.
The absolute bound is carnot efficiency, which is about 80% for coupling to the sun. This is close enough that out/in is fine. Additionally out/in is the correct model because you are converting energy not movng it. 'Simple silicon cells can't exceed about 35% efficiency because they need to pick whether to waste energy in blue light or ignore energy in infrared' is the only other piece of information needed to convert that to a quantitatively and physically complete model. You can even communicate it succinctly by drawing a rectangle on a black body diagram.
> saying in school maths that you can't take the square root of -1.
This is also anti-education and a far worse sin because it is crushing one of the few moments where mathematics might actually be learned in a maths class instead of rote algorithm memorization. A teacher should never ever say this. Far better to say something along the lines of "that's a question that doesn't have an answer when we're talking about numbers on the number line, come talk to me about it later". Or "it's really cool that you're thinking about that, here's the khan academy and wiki pages, write a letter telling me all about it instead of your normal homework". Or even "think about it and tell me what you think the answer should be".
We dove into this knowing full well the dire energy risks that escalation posed to Europe and are now acting shocked that we didnt prepare.
Even now Stoltenburg's official line is basically "suck it up, Europe" which I assume means that NATO leadership is perfectly comfortable with the idea of a European economic disaster this winter.
The solutions you mentioned are all great in theory but the workable ones mostly all have a 5-10 year horizon and we have a problem now.
Russian war crimes apologists are the worst. Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault. And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy. It wasn't something to prepare for because it was unthinkable. It was still a huge risk to prepare for though.
Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either. Or to invade Libya. Or to invade Iraq/Afghanistan.
Whataboutism as a rationale for war escalation with a nuclear power is insane.
To consider reining in NATO expansion war to be equivalent to war crime apologetics is beyond absurd.
If we get to winter and the Russian economy fares better than ours (and at first glance it looks like it will) then a lot of people should be eating a lot of humble pie.
Cut the Russian propaganda, NATO didn't expand to Ukraine. Ukraine, a sovereign country, wanted to join NATO, as is their every right. Denying Ukraine that right and excusing Russia's war crimes is pretty bad.
I'm not excusing Russian anything and Im not repeating any propaganda.
I'm explaining that war, gas crisis and 18% inflation was a predictable and deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation.
You didnt want to avoid this scenario and consider withdrawing this invitation and "denying ukraine that right". I get that.
> deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation.
Yes, imagine what would have happened to Chechnya or Georgia if we had let them into NATO. No, that would have been an invitation to attack Ukraine, we should have let them in.
And what did we do to Chechnya? Have you considered you've got your causality backwards? These countries want to join NATO because they are sick of Russian meddling. No country is being forced into NATO.
> Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault.
Alas, the world doesn't operate based on the moral principles you imply, but cold hard realpolitik. Actions have consequences in the great power game between nation states.
> And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy.
The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving. "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate. I'll be greatly surprised if at the end of this, Ukraine isn't economically destroyed, geographically devastated. Territories lost will remain lost, and the deaths of so many people will have been for nothing more than furthering the geopolitical and industrial interests of the main instigators.
> Alas, the world doesn't operate based on the moral principles you imply, but cold hard realpolitik. Actions have consequences in the great power game between nation states.
If there's anything the Russian invasion of Ukraine isn't, it's realpolitik. Invading a country because "they aren't a real country and they should be ours" is as far as the cold practicality of realpolitik as possible. (Unless you choose to believe Russia's propaganda that it was all due to NATO's expansion, which even if true is even stupider - check Finland and Sweden which joined). Invading with the walking clown of an excuse of an army is also pretty far from practical considerations.
> The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving.
What are you basing this on? Have you checked their official interest rates, inflation rates (of course a bucket of salt is to be applied with those) and the warnings from the central bank governess? Not only is their economy not doing great, they are still yet to feel the effects of being cut off from industrial machinery and electronics they used to rely on. China and India can't replace all their planes, tractors, cars, trucks, phones, computers.
> "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate
Well thankfully people are actively working on this so we don't have to "believe" into anything. We have cold hard data from the ground in OSINT, compiled by volunteers such as Oryx. The fog of war is certainly obscuring things, but it's plainly obvious to see that Russian losses are massive in absolute and relative terms, in men and matériel. And the Russian army confirms that itself by the type of machines it fields (they've started reactivating obsolete tanks from the reserves) and it's desperate recruitment drives.
>Unless you choose to believe Russia's propaganda that it was all due to NATO's expansion, which even if true is even stupider - check Finland and Sweden which joined
A) Finland and Sweden havent yet joined and may not.
B) There are no ethnic Russians in Finland or Sweden in need of protection from paramilitaries sporting swastika tattoos.
C) No border disputes either.
D) No Russian military bases.
E) It's highly defensible terrain (see the winter war) unlike Ukraine.
F) Want to know where the Nazis launched an assault on Russia and where they almost won due to Russia's extreme strategic vulnerability? Hint : it wasnt the Finnish border.
Just because you dont understand the realpolitik doesnt mean it isnt realpolitik.
> A) Finland and Sweden havent yet joined and may not
After Russias constant rhetoric that Ukraine is only the first country on their “let’s genocide post soviet states” list their is 0 doubt that Finland and Sweden will finish the application.
> B) There are no ethnic Russians in Finland or Sweden in need of protection from paramilitaries sporting swastika tattoos.
The largest group of paramilitaries sporting swastikas and killing Russians in Ukraine is Russians from the neo nazi Wagner group so ironically if Russia left Ukraine there’d be less Russian deaths by (Russian) Nazis.
> C) No border disputes either.
Wasn’t any border disputes with Ukraine until they discovered vast natural resources in the Donbas region that would threaten Russia as a gas and oil provider to Europe. Then suddenly there were all kinds of problems then appeared over night and people who suspiciously looked like FSB and GRU officers started a civil war in Ukraine.
> E) It's highly defensible terrain (see the winter war) unlike Ukraine.
Either Ukraine is very defensible or Russia is terrible at war the losses so far have been staggering.
> The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving. "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate. I'll be greatly surprised if at the end of this, Ukraine isn't economically destroyed, geographically devastated. Territories lost will remain lost, and the deaths of so many people will have been for nothing more than furthering the geopolitical and industrial interests of the main instigators.
1,000 tanks and close to 45k soldiers either KIA or WIA is not “massive losses”?. The world thought Russia had years worth of tanks, turns out it only took 6 months before they started breaking out the the 4 man T62s.
These are western propaganda estimates from biased sources. Russian sources claim 7-10000 casualties (deaths and wounded). The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Taking into account that Russia has neither mobilized nor deployed its actual army yet, and that most of the fighting is being done by locals and volunteers from the disputed regions, I fail to see the significance of "massive casualties" much less people state that "Ukraine is winning".
Anyone that looks at the events with a modicum of objectivity should admit that it looks super-dire for Ukraine and the only thing Ukrainians can hope for given current trajectories is further devastation.
> These are western propaganda estimates from biased sources.
These are visually verified numbers, not even the numbers being claimed by Ukraine, if you want to improve them you can always point out duplicates and they will removed if they are actually duplicates. The real number is likely higher because not all losses will be photographed.
> Russian sources claim 7-10000 casualties (deaths and wounded)
Russian sources also claimed they weren't even going to invade the day before the invasion happened. Russian casualties are nearly guaranteed to be fake.
> Taking into account that Russia has neither mobilized nor deployed its actual army yet, and that most of the fighting is being done by locals and volunteers from the disputed regions, I fail to see the significance of "massive casualties" much less people state that "Ukraine is winning".
The VDV and Spetsnaz are both in Ukraine, are they not part of the 'actual army'?. In the least we know that the VDV has suffered massive losses, even just the videos of the gravestones in Russia should show you that Russias casualties are numbers are likely very fake.
If Ukraine isn't winning, why is Russias progress so slow?, Kyiv is less than 300km from the Russian and they still haven't made it there yet. Id consider being in month 6 of a '3 day special military operation' to be winning.
> Anyone that looks at the events with a modicum of objectivity should admit that it looks super-dire for Ukraine and the only thing Ukrainians can hope for given current trajectories is further devastation.
Yeah Ukraine has been devastated and lots of Ukrainians (both soldiers and civilian) are dying in the war, but Russia is suffering huge losses too, how else do you explain Russias fielding of old equipment (such as the T62)?. If Ukraine didn't put any resistance it would be even worse, Russia has been committing genocide with impunity in Ukraine and the only thing really standing in there way is the Ukrainian armed forces.
It's a bit more real in Europe. Here in the Netherlands for many people their gas bill went up hundreds of Euro's a month. My electricity and gas rates are 2.5x what they were in 2020.
The average family spending a additional 10% of their income of heating isn't what i would call "nothing"
The problem for europe is that solar panels, windfarms, and nuclear power plants don't produce natural gas. Electricity is great, but it's not a replacement for natural gas by itself. In Germany, only 25% of natgas usage is accounted for by electricity production.
It isn't difficult to synthesise methane (which is what natural gas is). You "just" need lots of energy. If the problem was "Even if we have plenty of electricity, how will we get methane?" the answer is you just synthesise it. Right now Europe's problem is keeping the lights on and their people alive in the coming winter.
Like many European countries, it is usual to heat German homes with gas boilers. You could (and if we don't want even worse climate change, must) replace those with electrical heating, most likely heat pumps with resistive backup. A heat pump doesn't care whether the electricity powering it is from a solar panel or a wind farm or what.
As long as the power continues to come during the winter night when there has not been much wind for a couple of weeks.
Solar is great for powering air conditioning systems, wind is far less reliable for powering heating appliances.
In practice, we're not able to provide heat to places like northern Europe without either fossil fuels or nuclear, and many countries have been trying to get rid of nuclear.
Electricity, if the price is low enough, can fully replace almost every use case for natural gas. This will require some level of investment, of course, such as replacing gas ovens with electric ovens (or better, heat pumps) as well as replacing gas machinery with electric alternatives for most industries.
There MAY be a few cases where alternatives are harder to find (where you need the chemistry of the gas rather than the energy), but that is a pretty small percentage overall.
But to produce energy at prices that are competitive to typical prices for NG is pretty hard without either coal or cost efficient nuclear, at least in colder climates. Solar is perhaps close to becoming cheaper in sunny, dry areas further south, but wind power looks like a poor alternative at the scale needed, since it's so unreliable. Maybe one day batteries or other storage will be cheap enough that we can store wind power for a week or more, but for now, it looks like the only low-CO2 option is nuclear.
I suggest you look at how much natural gas is used by the chemical industry, in Germany ~25% of the natural gas consumed is consumed by non-energy related uses as in not heating, electricity production, smelting cooking etc, with ammonia and fertilizer production accounting for about 15% of total consumption alone.
That isn’t a small percentage and those industries have an enormous knock on effect globally there is a reason why the UN put the shortage of chemical fertilizers as one of the top priorities.
Cheaper electricity won’t solve that problem and the gas prices must come down because otherwise food prices would sky rocket world wide and we will be at a severe risk of having famine in developing countries.
And whilst there are other alternatives to natural gas such as gasification which is popular in China that still requires biomass and countries like Germany cannot simply shift their production to gasification for both environmental and practical reasons.
In other words, Germany could cut at least 75% of their NG consumption, which is pretty significant.
This link describes how even the ammonia can be produced from hydrogen, which in turn can be produced from electricity (solar, nuclear, wind, take your pick):
Germany can do that maybe by 2040. Retrofitting every home in Germany to do away with gas heating and implement efficient electrical heating is easier said than done, to put it lightly. We're talking trillions in euros worth of investment and spending.
If electricity doesn't come down enough in price, I fear it will take a lot longer than 2040. IF the price of electricity can be brought down below the price of natural gas per unit of energy, many use cases (the low hanging fruits) can be replaced relatively quickly.
Over the last couple of decades, though, the electricity price in Germany seems to have risen sharply, even when not including the last year.
It seems to me that many of the energy related policies in many countries have been focusing way to much on symbolism, instead of minimizing the price while also limiting actual harm to the population and the environment as much as possible. And when the price of electricity doesn't come down, consumers want to use it for as few things as possible.
And the first step is to have a realistic plan to make electricity as cheap and abundant as possible, as soon as possible, while still minimizing pollution.
Also, every step helps. If we cut consumption in half, we halve the rate of global warming (at least). It's not like its all-or-nothing.
With two candidates for the next UK PM having polar opposite views on how to fix the economy, who do you think is more correct in their proposal: Sunak or Truss?
Yeah did not expect any different from Labor and Lib Dems, was curious about the 2 candidates. Interesting to see Sunak taking a non "modern conservative" approach, quite different from Grover Norquist school of thought. Wonder if any R candidate from the American side would even be able to take such a stance.
Assuming one has to be "more correct" is a fool's errand. You are talking about the dregs of an already corrupt and ideologically (rather than evidence) driven party that was further culled to only those who were willing to support the current inept and corrupt PM.
The Tories are so out of ideas and people with any talent or charisma, they think these two are the best they have to offer. Both have literally nothing to address this except doubling down on fantasy economics that we can see hasn't worked up to this point.
As many pundits have noted, the UK needs to negotiate good trade deals before its bargaining positions weakens further. Looking at the forecast, it might already be too late for that.
- Investment bank Citigroup forecasts UK inflation will hit 18.6 per cent in January 2023 — the highest peak in almost half a century — because of soaring wholesale gas prices.
- The bank predicted that the country’s retail energy price cap — which limits how much the average household pays for heating and electricity — would be raised to £4,567 in January and then £5,816 in April (approx $6880, €6850) compared with the current level of £1,971 a year. It added that the shifts would lead to inflation “entering the stratosphere”.
- UK and European wholesale natural gas prices are already trading at close to 10 times normal levels and other forecasters have also raised their inflation predictions.
- The energy regulator Ofgem will on Friday (26 Aug) announce the energy price cap for the period between October and January, which most analysts expect to rise to more than £3,500 for a household with average usage of energy — an increase of 75 per cent on current levels.
Inflation isn't causing this. Inflation is devaluing of the currency. What's causing this is increased acquisition costs due to public policy.
6K seems reasonable for a family's annual energy bill. Frankly, it seems on the lower end for such a climate. What's really absurd in the UK is property prices. You'd be able to afford all the energy you desire if you weren't paying 10x what it should cost for housing.
I strongly disagree that nearly 20% of the median household income (£31,400 [0]) is reasonable for a family's annual energy bill. Median income for the poorest 20% is £14,600 - the chances they could afford £6k a year on energy are slim.
Are you really suggesting that housing costs should average around £1400 per year (about one tenth the average annual rent [1]), but energy costs more than 4 times that amount are reasonable?
> Are you really suggesting that housing costs should average around £1400 per year
Relative to wages in the UK, absolutely. The working class is getting absolutely fleeced over there.
> I strongly disagree that nearly 20% of the median household income
Same thing here, there's two sides to every equation. The UK has to import almost all of it's energy, importing is expensive.
It seems to me, global energy demands are outstripping supply, and energy is going to become a permanently larger portion of everyone's budget. The way of life we've enjoyed the last 70+ years in the western world, that life is quickly changing.
On exactly what assumptions and calculations could you come to the conclusion that 6k GBP / year is reasonable energy spend for an average household in the UK?
They’re arrested for being street-blocking twats, to the cheers of everyone with somewhere to be. Pooling donations to install insulation would have been fine. But no. No interest in that.
Tax those who can afford it to help those that can't.
At some point if the rich continue to demand sacrifice of the poor to prop up their gathering of wealth, it'll be guillotines in the streets. Historically Britain's upper class has been sensible at offering compromise to avoid extreme change, but it appears the current crop think their control of the media is enough to keep the population placid while they suffer.
So far, they appear to have been right. Who knows how long that'll continue as things get significantly harder for the average person.
Yes? That's why I was very specific about who should pay it. This is such a common response to any taxation. It is true that any solution done wrong can make things worse, but that's not a reason not to try and solve the problem, it's a reason to do it right.
The alternative, not taxing anyone much, has been tried: it gets us here, with public services collapsing and the country becoming less and less desirable to exist in. We are so far on the left of the Laffer curve it is laughable, even if we ignore the insanity of assuming that the value of having a society that functions isn't relevant.
I have not seen this done correctly anywhere. I have only experienced taxes getting higher and higher with nothing much to show for it. Meanwhile the really rich folk are also getting richer.
The NHS is great. I've lived my life with access to it and in a society provided for by it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. Taxes have paid for it, and should continue to do so.
What alternative are you offering? Not taxing anyone much leaves us with a society that simply doesn't function, we see that right now. FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant when we are already in a situation where most people are facing poverty and ruin. If this is all we can expect, then might as well roll the dice on doing it right.
Of course, the idea there is no way to actually tax the rich is absurd, we can do it, we have just had decades of government with no will to do so.
> FUD about "well, they could tax the wrong people" is pretty irrelevant
This is not FUD. They always tax the wrong people.
We as a society can do many, many things but we simply cant coordinate to do them. And indeed we should consider this lack of coordination (for a lack of a better term) as something we should take into account when making decisions.
The solution: demand taxation that works, and if that fails, general strikes until they get it right, and if that fails, historically the answer is guillotines in the streets—I would never condone violence, but the reality is inevitable if a population suffers enough, violence begets violence, we need to impress upon those that seek to profit at all cost that there is a limit to all things, and they must not start a war.
"We voted in the Tories again and they continued to lower taxes for their mates and screw over the poor" is hardly trying everything. Throwing your hands in the air, accepting suffering and society collapsing while they profit off it isn't an answer.
You are saying you don't think it's impossible, just that no one is willing to do it: we have to create pressure to do the right thing, and demand it, not make excuses and accept it as inevitable.
- Tax capital gains and dividends that are classically the rates actually paid by the megarich rather than income tax.
- Tax wealth directly rather than just income.
- Tax much more heavily generally and commit to a significant basic income to ensure everyone has a solid baseline.
This is just off the top of my head, we have an entire government of people and a huge field of existing research and ideas, not to mention other countries and historic data on taxing more than the UK right now to look at.
I don't want to go extreme at all; centralising economies has the worst track record of starvation and killing in all of history. I'm just wondering what the plan was :)
Taxing wealth is not relatively minor. It is the way to transfer ownership of companies to the government.
Take most rich people; their wealth is generally in assets like land, or in investments. If you gradually move their company ownership and land ownership to the government, what do you get?
An incentive for the wealthy to split their companies up and sell them off, rather than creating giant megacorps with outsize impact on consumers and society?
In theory, in practice the very rich pay an effective tax rate of around 20%, because they can turn it into capital gains and dividends with lower rates than income tax.
So we need to increase taxes there rather than income tax, and, I would personally argue, begin taxing wealth rather than just income when people have millions of pounds of assets.
Of course, I'd also argue we should have higher bands, once we fix the other problems and people are actually paying those rates. Paying say, 60% over a million pounds of income seems totally reasonable for me. You've already got a huge amount of income at that point taxed at a lower rate. You can afford to pay more, and should want to in order to get a better society to live in.
I think there are phase transitions happening in terms of how much the population can accept. And usually these occurs rather quickly, after a prolonged stalement. Let's see if the current upper class can read the signs before a critical threshold is reaches.
>Tax those who can afford it to help those that can't.
So...tax those whose income is higher than Latty's income - 1 pound? I am sure you can afford it.
A new progressive tax regime requires a lot of research, consultations, political capitals, and most importantly, time. We don't have a lot of time right now.
Yes, I am relatively well off and actively support paying more tax myself. I would argue that we should target wealth as much as income, either way. Taxation is paying for a service: the service of living in a nice society. I want to pay to make the country nicer for me to exist in. I don't want people I meet to be struggling, I don't want people I care about to be suffering.
We don't have a lot of time, that's a reason to start now rather than delaying the solution even further: people will suffer the longer we pretend we can have the country function as a funnel to the wealthy instead of a place for people to live.
Do what the energy companies are suggesting - fix the cap at or about the current price. Establish a government backed fund that will ensure the continued operation of the energy companies. Accelerate the already underway efforts looking at realigning how the UK energy market works (that is - reduce and/or eliminate the link between gas and electricity pricing - due mainly to our over-reliance on CCGT generation). As energy wholescale costs fall over the coming years the energy companies re-pay the support costs.
It does mean we customers will endure higher energy costs for longer - but it will greatly soften the impact on the massive spikes we are set to see over the next 6+ months. It will also have the knock on effect of reducing inflationary pressures, making the need for rapid interest rate rises less likely, reducing borrowing costs.
Look again at what can be done to further enhance and accelerate investments in alternative energy production and storage. This includes looking at tackling planning regulations which so often tie up critical infrastructure projects in the UK for years (sometimes decades), too much nimbyism. Often by peeps who moved next to an existing facility (be it a windfarm, a nuclear plant, etc.) and then complain when it's suggested the plant be extended ... shocker ... who'd have thought that could happen! Invest in a massive, nation wide home insulation scheme - properly invest, not the silly little schemes they've tried so far. Which were badly thought out and badly implemented, and probably full of corruption and wastage.
At the same time continue (and back-date) the "windfall" tax on exploration and production - this wasn't "profit", this was "free money". The companies did not generate this income from improved working practices, efficiency drives, deployment of new technologies, etc. etc. - it was in nearly all senses a windfall. The oil majors are unlikely to invest it ("we don't even know what to do with all this income!" ...), and even if they did it will have absolutely no impact on the lives of UK citizens for years and years - the problem exists now, it needs a solution now.
The whole situation is made more infuriating given the UK produces 50% (+/-) of its own gas. But thanks to our exposure to the prevailing market and the ease of transport to the continent we are suffering as much (heck, more than) many other nations in Europe.
Read what numeric83 said. I couldn't have put it better myself. The longer they leave it the worse it gets. But human nature means they won't act until the train hits them in the face.
Its a catch 22 - people are too stupid to understand £0.50 per kWh up from £0.28 per kWh will be the new price cap so they do the really stupid average annual bill. However, it turns out people see the headline say £3,000 or whatever, and believe that is what their bill will actually be, irrespecitve of their usage.
>The investment bank predicted that the country’s retail energy price cap — which limits how much households pay for heating and electricity — would be raised to £4,567 in January and then £5,816 in April, compared with the current level of £1,971 a year.... Nabarro said Citi’s new forecasts had taken account of a 25 per cent increase in wholesale gas prices last week and a 7 per cent rise in wholesale electricity prices.
No price controls can account for the fact that energy prices are up a lot globally. Pretending they're not up and keeping the price cap in place is worse. First it doesn't discourage energy usage. That's a big purpose of prices in a market economy. Second, when something is priced below market price it inevitably leads to shortages. This will have to be addressed through some kind of political action that will be sub-optimal. Rather than a young person seeing higher energy prices and adjusting their AC, while an old person may choose to pay the higher price, you'll see ham-fisted conservation measures.
If you're against having the customer's price reflect more closely the market price, you have to propose an alternative. Do you want people to use less? If so, how do you do that? Or do you want people to continue using the same, pretend the high prices don't exist and just pay for it through taxes? Either way, the money will have to come from somewhere or rationing will have to take place. There's no free lunch
This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses.
We already don’t have AC in summers which are growing more and more extreme (regularly over 90F, and sometimes over 100F) - there’s nothing there to turn off.
Edit:
Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.
> Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.
The largest gas provider in UK (British Gas) profits in millions of pounds:
2009 147
2010 226
2011 258
2012 291
2013 153
2014 96
2015 73
2016 43
2017 11
2018 8
2019 -5
2020 27
I couldn't find more recent data but please provide it if you have it. These are in millions of pounds. Suppose their profit jumped to 100 million pounds (4x the 2020 profits). Do you think 100 MILLION pounds would solve the problem? To put this in context, public sector fuel and energy expenditure in 2021 was 456 BILLION. And this is only public sector. Profits aren't even a rounding error.
I would look at the company's financial statements. The article doesn't really provide much insight. I took Centrica, which was mentioned in the article and looked at their 2022 results ending on June 30th 2022:
> British Gas Services & Solutions adjusted operating profit fell by 88% to £7m.
> The reversal of a £50m Covid-19 and industrial action impact from H1 2021 was partially offset by an increase in customer compensation following disappointing service levels over the past winter, continued higher absence rates earlier in the year, and increased workload, which we believe is a function of customers choosing to have non-urgent jobs they had been delaying during the
Interim Results | Group Overview (continued) Centrica plc Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2022 7 Covid-19 pandemic completed. These temporary factors negatively impacted adjusted operating profit by approximately £25m
It's difficult to tease out, but the profit numbers are so tiny compared to the aggregate increase in price experienced by consumers. I think focusing on profit makes for good headlines but underlying issues are a lot bigger. Taking away the tiny sliver of profit these companies have will reduce innovation and new entrants while doing absolutely nothing to alleviate higher consumer prices.
> This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses.
Advocating for "market prices" doesn't necessarily mean letting everyone fend for themselves. You can provide grants/subsidies for the poor, while still keeping market prices so everyone is still incentivized to save as much energy as possible.
>Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.
Sounds like a great way to discourage investment and make future shortages even worse. The energy industry runs on a boom-bust cycle. Why bother investing for the boom years (ie. right now) when you know the government is going to seize all your profits?
Why bother investing at all when you can just buy back stock and make the owners/CEO rich[1]? If you think these companies are sinking their profits into investing for the future, you're dreaming.
1. As per BP's Q12022 reports, their capital expenditure was $2.9B compared to $1.6B of buybacks. Is that too much? Too little? I don't know. However, I do think your characterization is way too simplistic.
2. the boom-bust cycle is exactly the reason not to reinvest all the surplus profits now. You might intuitively think that investing now will help lower oil prices, but it takes years for an oil project to be online so by the time the project is complete there will be an oil glut.
The problem is that there isn't enough gas being produced because of the war. The solution to this is to make the gas companies pay war profiteering taxes (say 98%) as their income is soaring because of a war, and use the money to invest in other ways to heat homes. Scotland has a lot of coal, why not start looking at creating coal gas?
Heat pumps would be better, but there is already an insane queue for those.
> No price controls can account for the fact that energy prices are up a lot globally.
Sure, but how would these energy companies fancy being under the thumb of Putin.
If they want to benefit from the spoils of free markets with consumers who haven't died from covid then they must pay their fair share to maintain them. So whether it's a cap on the prices they can make, or a tax on their profits. Doesn't really matter. The burden cannot be met only by energy consumers.
All of that is still paid for by consumers, and we already tax profits. Where do you think the money (including the profit taxes) comes from? Consumer prices.
Not from any particular clerverness. Or increase in productivity. Purely because of abnormal market conditions due to a war waged by a dictator they have collaborated with for the last 20 odd years.
I don’t believe Brits are capable of revolting against this. They did hit the streets in anti-lockdown protests though, which is ironic because in the grand scheme of things that (lockdown) was temporary, but this inflation wave will be madly felt for quite long.
Imagine if French citizens were facing energy bills as high as the UK (£5,816, €6850). French citizens would never tolerate such levels.
From Reuters: "France has committed to capping an increase on regulated electricity costs at 4%. To help do this the government has ordered utility EDF (EDF.PA), which is 80% state owned, to sell more cheap nuclear power to rivals"
France really feels like they're building towards serious trouble in the near future. The gap between the discounted electricity costs paid by consumers and the actual underlying wholesale prices is only widening (to the point I think they may even have the lowest consumer costs and highest wholesale prices in Europe, or at least not far off), and that basically all has to be subsidised by the government using debt. They're also part of the Eurozone which is founded on common agreements on government debt, and they're at twice the debt cap and rising. The general consensus is that they cannot stop doing this without serious civil unrest and likely widespread rioting which seems well founded in past events. Energy prices are not the only problem - they have more generous retirement policies than other countries, for example - but changing those other things is just as intolerable.
They are finalising the full nationalisation of EDF, their main electricity supplier and owner/operator of their nuclear power plants.
Then, the electricity wholesale price on the open market becomes irrelevant. As long as their set a price that covers their actual costs for their own consumers they are fine and it is sustainable, and certainly does not require any debts since it does not actually cost anything (beyond the cost of buying the remaining 20% of EDF).
Privatizing everything is great when things are going well. When the shit hits the fan it's nice for elected representatives to be able to force essential utilities to lose money.
Ah, but what many might not grasp about (British) politics is that when the S.H.T.F it is traditional for the UK to vote in the 'other lot' (be that Labour or Conservatives) since the current lot 'are a useless bunch of twats'. This has the advantage of the 'new' government being able to blame all the current problems on the 'old lot'.
The anti-lock down protesters were a fringe group. An energy crisis is different matter. It will not only affect the lunatic fringe, this will affect everyone.
It would be an interesting case study for leaders around the world - confiscate a huge chunk of liberty and you will have a fringe protest, lose a few thousand pounds from chequebooks and you will have blood.
I don't think anyone I know here in the UK saw a temporary lockdown as "confiscating a huge chunk of liberty".
On the contrary, we recognise that everyone has a duty to keep everyone else safe, which was especially true during the early pandemic times, when it seemed like it was quite dangerous and Americans ignored it and died in the tens of thousands.
It was when it was observed that we were not in it together that heads rolled.
And it looks like our observations panned out, as we do not have any lockdowns anymore and I don't know of anyone who is still getting sick in a bad way.
The lockdown protests kind or proved to me that while english people are getting angrier overall, they seem to be getting progressively dumber about how they lash out.
I could foresee riots again like the 2010 ones but I doubt it'd do to much change other than lead to some imprisoned people and property damage.
So, unlike, say, the poll tax riots i doubt itll lead to any meaningful British/English political changes.
It may add fuel to Northern Ireland joining Ireland/Scottish independence though.
While a lot of people lost money during the banking crisis a lot of people were unaffected. The current inflation crisis means the bottom quartile will probably start to go hungry and be unable to afford to heat their homes.
It's not like those people were saving 20-30% of their income 2 years ago and they're now spending 20% of their income on heating and their groceries got 20% more expensive and fuel (for driving) increased by 50-100%.
True but that was “just” a bad recession, but we never actually recovered from it. Now we are the brink of global war, reeling from Covid supply chain issues, and stagflation all on top of a world economy that has been propped up by central banks for the past decade while simultaneously exploding the money supply and essentially making internet rates zero.
This is the world on modern monetary theory. Not even once.
I've been able to go out, see anyone I've wanted to, write whatever I want.
I can even be guaranteed to drink the tap water regardless of where I am in the country. If I accidentally wander off a path I won't get shot.
If I have the wrong coloured skin it can still be dangerous to be in the wrong neighborhoods in the USA.
American have a very strange perspective on "basic human rights". Have you been watching too much Fox and think that there are "no go zones" in London or other batshit insane things?
For the record, I'm very much anti Tory, very much a promoter of vaccines which work and very much a promoter of being able to understand and question statistical analyses in a consistent way.
People can place words in my mouth but they are not true. I'm an educated individual with a strong understanding of statistical analysis, scientific modelling and was asked to give advice of the validity of the tools used to construct report 9. I reported them to be as broken as I feared with evidence and then the action on this was strictly political in the UK after advising govt committees.
The basic right of not getting arrested for traveling in the British countryside or the ability to go and earn a living without government intrusion in all factors had been removed for several months and the thought of being able to congregate in a small group to simply discuss something like the works of Shakespeare was for a time effectively illegal.
The fact these rights were restored has nothing to do with them being removed en masse. I'll note whilst still allowing private flights into the country without restriction as long as you were bringing in than £50k to the country(!).
I'm not talking about the USA. Nor do I care to here. I'm not talking about any political party here, again nor do I care to. I'm not taking about anti scientific rigour or scientific discussion here, not do I care to. And nor do I care to discuss statistical illiteracy in any way shape or form.
I won't argue with the global broad stroke of that definition at 1000ft not being correct.
But being legally threatened and forced to leave for visiting a publicly owned and publicly accessible UK national trust land in the middle of nowhere is stupid, yet this is what was regularly happening in 2020.
Basic right of way ability to go about ones life without state harassment was removed in countries that people pretend are full off freedom and virtue.
The policy does seem absurd hindsight. As does the whole "wash your hands for 20 seconds" and "we see no reason to record mask-wearing". I agree it's important to be cautious when deciding whether an emergency overrides the right to liberty. We have to bear in mind that in mid-2020 we had very little knowledge of the fatality, infectiousness, or transmission mechanism of the virus. It was huge, unknown risk to public health, there wasn't time to research the virus profile or to carefully construct fine-grained policies.
We should probably ban loads of our low paid workers from entering the country, print a load of money and give it to people, tell the remaining workers to stay at home, change all of our working practices so that they don't match our infrastructure, and unilaterally sever trade with partners that sell us energy.
You need to factor in the cost of training them and their quality of service. For example European drivers usually have better English skills or have worked in similar coffee shops before, used to driving in Europe, familiar with cleaning and construction regulations, ...
"Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ Louis C. K.
But sadly yes, Europeans tend to have better English than the English.
There are no more europeans coming in. Ye know, low wage and visa restrictions don't work when it comes to people moving in from high income economies.
Wealthier class makes in always incredibly difficult for foreigners to take the jobs. Through paperwork, qualifications and red tape. You can see how angry they get here when the topic of visas for Indian tech workers come up. Suddenly everyone stays they are cheating, bringing wages down etc.
the context of this quote is that the UK economy shot itself in the foot by getting rid of cheap European labour, then someone responded actually no because they got even cheaper labour from outside Europe, I was pointing out that they are not cheap as they seem due to training cost and decline in quality of service.
They shot themselves in the foot already - but is there any proof that european labour was cheap? I kept reading about this, but my anecdata shows otherwise. At least in tech. In many cases it was the opposite tbh.
I agree with the printing a lot of money being a problem. But in terms of low cost labor, I don't think that labor expenses are a huge expense to energy production.
There are whole sectors of economy begging for employees, or curtailing services due to lack thereof. Some people are perhaps happy with that but it must be impacting inflation.
Childcare and retail come to mind if you like examples.
Yes the 5% of mostly under 50s in the UK who refused any jab are all secretly dying... Oh wait, im still here...
Edit: there will be much more to come when gran can't afford to heat herself at winter. The marginal "200k we think we maybe saved" will be shadowed by the damage of the next 2-5 years I fear. I would love to be wrong.
Edit2: apologies I was trying to be whitty, unlike those in charge of policy.
I wish I wasn't having to agree. Stay safe and best wishes for you and those around you for the next few years. I'm genuinely hoping I'm wrong to be concerned.
I've been whining about how unjust and non-meritocratic the current economy has been for the last 5 years and look at that... These insane inflation numbers are proving me right. I'm quite sure the inflation will continue too. My detractors were in fact gaslighting me the whole time, as I suspected.
The people at the top today are incompetent and lack principles. No better than the corrupt dictators of uncivilized nations. I almost get satisfaction seeing them driving that sinking ship all the way to the seafloor. That's the most meritocratic thing I've seen in a decade.
Why are these numbers proving you right? Those people that made an decision to transition to a sustainable lifestyle by:
- Isolate their house and/or live in a small, well isolated apartment
- Buy solar panels and a heatpump.
- Save gas by wearing an extra sweater and setting the thermostat a bit lower.
are affected far less by this massive inflation.
Of course, for the 37% in the UK that do not own a house (probably because they cannot afford it) and/or convince their landlord to isolate their property, it is unjust.
Since more people own their house than rent it seems that this particular inflation wave makes the economy more just rather than less just, given that the biggest polluters are hit the the hardest.
The word you probably want is "insulate". A thermally insulated house (it's common to skip the word "thermally" but we can insulate for noise for example) will retain heat better and thus be less expensive for the same volume to heat during a cold winter.
If the house was isolated that might actually make heat loss worse, because it suggests other homes are quite distant. For example my sister's house is an "end terrace" so one wall of it won't lose much heat since the other side is somebody else's house and no doubt they also keep warm in the winter. In contrast my mother's house is perched up on a hill, I wouldn't quite describe it as "isolated" but certainly she's going to spend a lot of money heating it.
Inflation means that currency is losing value. That's what happens when people receive money that they don't deserve (I.e. they didn't actually provide an equivalent amount of value back to society); it ends up devaluing the currency. IMO, what we're seeing is the tip of the iceberg. It just took some time for reality to catch up. If I'm right, inflation will only get worse because the mis-allocation of resources only seems to have become worse. I'm not seeing any improvement - I'm seeing people doubling down on bad decisions; people with money appear to be increasingly erratic. I'm not seeing anyone adjusting their strategy.
Even for the people that own their own home there's also the capital required to install insulation, solar panels or a heat pump.
How many of those home owners do you think have tens of thousands of pounds just laying around that they can spend on those upgrades? (and that's after taking in to consideration the grants available)
If you look at the amount of cars driving around in the UK (similarly priced as all the upgrades combined), probably most homeowners. Also, if someone does not have sufficient capital, there are subsidised lease options for all upgrades.
You can buy a car (although not a new car) for significantly less than £10k, so, no, that's a nonsense comparison. A very brief search on autotrader showed me about 80 cars for under £1,000 within a ten mile radius, for example.
Also where the hell can you lease cavity wall insulation from? And what happens if you stop paying, do they come round and suck it back out of the walls?
2 The UK gov't rather is arresting people demonstrating for housing insulation. This is probably the dumbest thing a gov't can do, since insulation is a "bipartisan" issue and everybody would profit from it.
3 On top of this the UK is on the verge of picking a fight with the EU and risking a trade war by its illegal and unilateral changes to the Brexit agreement. NI political issues aside, no sane gov't would do that at this point in time.
> "Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it"
The UK govt has done better than most on renewables in the past decade. Wind energy in particular. In 2020, wind power supplied 24.8% of all UK electricity, and this will continue to increase as major new wind farms - some of the largest in the world - come online in the coming years:
You say "better" but you're not giving a comparison.
The UK doesn't appear anywhere in the ranking on the Wikipedia link of countries with >90% electricity from renewables.
You're last link also pertains to electricity only BTW (you make it sound like all energy is considered) and the UK aims for 2025 to have "periods" of fossil-free electricity generation, while other countries do that already today and not just for "periods".
I'm sorry, but the UK sucks.
My only consolation to you is that a number of other western countries also suck.
It's not valid to compare the UK to various small countries that have always had renewables in the form of large hydroelectric systems, which the UK's geography simply doesn't have.
My point is that, in the past decade, the UK has transitioned to renewables faster than any other major industrialised nation.
As recently as 2012, nearly 45% of UK electricity still came from coal. This has been cut to around 1% in 2022, and all remaining coal-fired power stations will be closed completely by 2025.
Obviously there is still much more to do, but the UK compares favourably here to, for example, the USA or Germany.
Countries with >90% of electricity from renewables are, almost universally, ones which have unusually good geography for hydropower combined a low enough population and energy demand that this meets their needs. This is not something that the UK or most of the world can replicate.
A common short sited assumption to make. In no way did the parent suggest he supported it, just an example that the average person cares mostly about things that directly affect their lives regardless of the bigger causes at play.
