While many central banks around the world are still trying to cool inflation, China is grappling with falling prices.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropped 0.5% in November on an annual basis, the biggest fall since the depths of the pandemic three years ago, according to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday.
The drop marked an acceleration in the rate of deflation from October, when the CPI fell 0.2% from a year earlier, and prompted calls for urgent action from Beijing to boost demand and prevent a downward spiral of prices.
The data come days after Chinese policymakers vowed to strengthen fiscal and monetary support to boost the world’s second biggest economy, which is struggling with a real-estate crisis, high youth unemployment and subdued consumer confidence.
Unemployment is essentially the same as it was before the pandemic, and is actually a bit lower than it was in the beginning of 2018.
Inflation is of course a problem. The point is that deflation is a much bigger problem. It’s not as big an issue if you have plenty of savings to fall back on, which is to say, if you don’t have savings to fall back on, you’re fucked.
Unemployment is a shit metric when you can be starving, homeless, and employed. To those people, inflation is a life threatening squeeze.
Which countries do you think don’t have homeless people, just out of curiosity? In the west, homelessness has almost nothing to do with actual economic factors.
You’re the one who brought up layoffs, mate.
Why did you bring up a metric that you yourself are calling shit?
I just got here. But boy do I feel welcome to this conversation.
Different person