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.
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.
They should’ve eaten on the floor for a few years until they could get a really good table. /s
People want things now, not later.
People also need things now, not later.
They often need things now.