Arborbridge wrote:I'm not clear how Sunak is debasing the currency. Dod's view is more relevant, in my opinion.
Arb.
If we ignore blaming Mr Sunak, the answer is very very simple.
Public spending, by which I mean All public spending, has to be paid for. There are two places where you can find money to pay people not to work, to pay their fuel bills etc. Either taxes or borrowing. We had a significant amount of QE, which technically is as quack is to a duck with respect to money printing. Then we had the huge Covid bills. Now we have the bills to keep the lights on etc.
The situation has left western governments and the UK with a sovereign debt crisis. There are three solutions. Stop paying for anything, ie including the NHS. Default on your debts. Finally inflate the debt away (financial repression).
Now Dod is right that there are reasons that some things are currently expensive. However there are only three (again) reasons that they should continue to get more expensive (inflation). Demand for them could increase. The supply continue to decrease. Finally the yardstick used to measure could change. The latter is the value of money, which is most easily influenced by increasing the supply (with commodity money that's debasement).
A simple web search will provide charts of M0, M1 M2 etc. The increase in supply in recent years is remarkable. Austrian economists would regard any increase in such as inflation.