China has another massive headache now: It can’t stem deflation | CNN Business
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While many central banks around the world are trying to cool inflation, China is grappling with falling prices this year.

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.

  • nicetriangle@kbin.social
    20·
    11 months ago

    Fact of the matter is that most people can’t afford an $8000 furniture set. They may end up paying more for furniture in the long run than someone who can afford that set, but that’s just the unfortunate way of things. This well summed up in one of Terry Pratchett’s books:

    The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

      • hips_and_nips@lemmy.world
        11·
        11 months ago

        Yes, in the end they spend more, but in the present, that’s what their circumstances can afford them.

        Not everyone has the luxury to spend thousands on furniture at one time like you do apparently.

        • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldEnglish
          113·
          11 months ago

          That is why they can’t get ahead. You don’t buy garbage. You save up and buy something that will last, but no, they only buy cheap garbage.

          • hips_and_nips@lemmy.world
            13·
            11 months ago

            sigh

            While I agree with your strategy, I also have enough awareness that this strategy doesn’t work for everyone.

            If someone needs a bed to sleep, but they only have enough for a cheap bed, they buy the cheap bed and hope that when it wears out they can buy a better, higher quality one. They don’t forgo a bed and have worse health, they get what they can to get by.

            Go tell the single mother of four that she bought a garbage table so her kids have a place to eat and she should’ve bought the quality table that costs two months of her rent, because it lasts longer.

      • agent_flounder@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        Yes. Isn’t it a saying, “It’s really expensive being poor.” Or something like that.

        If you aren’t sitting on lots of cash and are already in debt, you simply don’t have a choice to buy the longer lasting item.