I suspect we’re engaged in a strange exercise of trying to convince ourselves that we, like the Americans, Brits and Europeans, have a big problem with inflation. I fear that, if we try hard enough, we’ll succeed.
As the December quarter consumer price index shows, it’s true some prices have risen noticeably. The price of petrol has jumped and so have home building costs.
But, as our top econocrats have been reminding us, that’s not a big deal. The world price of oil has always gone up and down, for many reasons – none of which we have any ability to influence. Most other rises we’ve seen are temporary problems caused by the pandemic and governments’ response to it, as the supply of certain goods (but not services) falls short of demand. Computer chips, for instance.
And, as Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe demonstrated in his recent testimony to a parliamentary committee, our price rises are nothing like as big a deal as those in America, Britain and Europe, where there’s a lot more going on than just the passing effects of the pandemic.
Lowe noted that, over the past year, electricity and gas prices have risen by 25 per cent in the US and Europe, and even more in Britain, but by 2 per cent in Australia. Used car prices are up 40 per cent in the US, but nothing like that here.
People complain about rising rents but, as with mortgage interest rates, there’s a gap between advertised rates and what people actually pay. Actual rents have fallen in Sydney and Melbourne. And though everyone’s highly conscious of the jump in petrol prices, petrol accounts for only about 3 per cent of the cost of all the goods and services households buy.
The funny thing is, there are various groups in Australia that want to believe our problem’s as big as the other rich countries’. The key group is the financial markets. As Lowe said, “some in financial markets look at what’s going on in the United States and Europe and say, ‘They’ve got higher inflation, it’s coming to Australia’. They may be right” - he said before going on to explain why that was unlikely.
But so convinced are our financial markets that we’re just a carbon copy of the US economy that they’re laying bets the Reserve will be forced to start whacking up interest rates within a few months and will go hell for leather for the rest of the year.
The media have been happy to report this speculation as though it’s pretty much set in stone. “Inflation on the rise” is a good story and “rates to rise” even better.
As for the public, it’s kinda pleased to be told inflation’s a big problem, not because it likes rising prices, but because it confirms what people have always believed: that keeping up with “the cost of living” is always a struggle.
If you run a bit short before pay day, this is incontrovertible proof that prices are rising rapidly. The notion that the problem may be inadequate pay rises never seems to occur.
The CPI people carry in their heads always gets much bigger increases that the one calculated by the Bureau of Statistics because ordinary mortals’ memory of price rises is always stronger than their memory of price falls. And it never occurs to them to include in their sums all the many prices that didn’t change.
Which means, I fear, there’s a big risk that all the talk of inflation and rising prices – and all the media stories of a rise in this or that price; stories that multiply when “inflation” becomes the flavour of the month - could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To see this, you need to remember where we’ve come from: eight years of surprisingly weak growth in wages and six years of the (officially-calculated) inflation rate being below 2 per cent.
For much of that time, Lowe – whose scrutiny of statistics is supplemented by having his “liaison” people speak to more than 100 key businesses a month – has explained the weakness in wage and price inflation as arising from a strong “cost-control mentality” among Australian businesses.
Lowe explains that many businesses – retailing in particular – have been through a period of intense competition. There’s the threat from “category killers” such as Bunnings and Officeworks, the decline of department stores, Aldi taking on Coles and Woolies, and the move to online shopping, which has opened access to overseas competitors and made price more “salient” in decisions to buy things.
This increased competition came at a time when retail demand hasn’t been particularly strong (thanks mainly to weak wage growth). Special sales and other forms of discounting have been widespread.
In these circumstances, firms have been most reluctant to raise prices. Rises in purchase costs that may not last have been absorbed rather than passed on. Instead, firms have become obsessed with controlling their costs – including, and in particular, their labour costs.
In their book Radical Uncertainty, British economists John Kay and Mervyn King argue there’s no such thing as a profit-maximising firm. It’s not that firms wouldn’t like to earn maximum profits, it’s that they don’t know where that point is.
In real life, there’s no diagram or equation you can look up to tell you. You know there is a “price point” beyond which you’ll lose more in sales than you gain from the price increase, but you don’t know where it is. In real life, you have to feel your way, reading the signs and making sure you don’t push it too hard.
See where I’m going? We’re coming from a period where price rises have been heavily constrained for a long time. Not big, not many. “I haven’t been game to raise my prices because none of my competitors have been been either.”
Suddenly, however, everyone’s talking about inflation and every day the media are reporting that this price is rising and that price is going up. It’s obvious prices everywhere are taking off.
“One of my competitors has moved, so I can too. There’s always some cost increase I can point to. In this environment, I won’t get much push-back from customers. The media’s been softening them up.”
Can we talk ourselves into having a real inflation problem like the other rich countries? We’ll find out whether prices can be raised by imagination alone.
I fear, however, that getting those higher prices passed through to bigger wage rises will be a taller order. And, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll get no ongoing increase in the inflation rate, just a worsening in the cost of living.
