I understand that reasoning under "normal" circumstances, but in today's climate a lot of people cannot afford to spend in any circumstances because prices are far too high anyway. In short, people cannot overspend because they do not have the money to do so, putting up interest rates appears irrelevant.

Because the media are bombarding us with pictures of people who were "just coping" before this crises hit and are now relying on food banks etc, we are all starting to think that the vast majority of people are living like this, this may well not the case, and putting up interest rates may have some success.

What percentage of people are now living hand to mouth I wonder. Is it as many as we think?

This quote ends on an interesting comment, "on things they do not need". What things would they be? Are there different things for different generations? Are the following needed or not?

At least one overseas holiday (vacation) per year.
Upgrade to the latest 85" television.
Televisions for other rooms.
Phone contracts with unlimited data for the whole family.
Multiple TV streaming service subscriptions.
Audio streaming service subscriptions.
New pc, laptop or tablet.
New/new to you car.
A second car.
Same spend on Christmas presents as last year.
Lottery tickets and scratchcards.
Gambling.

Also, I wonder if people will stop, or reduce, the sending of Christmas cards this year.

William

I have been interested in computers since my early teens, some years before i actually got to use one.

I don't remember quite how I first became interested.

I do remember that it was in the early 1960s reading Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future bought as a paperback after seeing it I think on a bookstall at New Street Station in Birmingham that inspired me that I wanted to be an inventor.

That sort of attitude has shaped my life greatly. I tend to consider ideas even if they at first glance seem ridiculous and I have sometimes found that by looking at them and adding something that something that will work can be found. It is that willingness to suspend disbelief for a while and think and not be dismissive with an annoyed wave of the hand that has helped me enormously. A willingness to be deemed as lacking confidence because I exercise caution before expresing an opinion rather than showing smiling confidence.

Years later, Arthur C. Clarke wrote, I think it might have been in The View from Serendip that in Profiles of the Future (which I think had been in hardback a few years before I saw the paperback version) he had speculated that the first man to walk on the moon might already be alive somewhere as a small boy, and in fact he was already a thirty year old man.

I remember that there was a road between two of the railway platforms at New Street Station and at the time it seemed quite odd to have a road down the middle of a railway station.

Years later, I learned that it had originally been two stations on the same site, for two different railway companies, that had later both become part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway in the railway grouing of 1923.

It is interesting that companies such as LMS and LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) each formed in 1923 only lasted for 25 years until nationalization into British Railways in 1948, yet those 25 years saw the development and use of most of the United Kingdom steam locomotives that are modelled by model railway companies today.

Another book that inspired me at that time was a Pelican paperback book Five Hundred Years of Printing by S. H. Steinberg, and I have been interested in Incunabula ever since.

And in a very large bookshop in Birmingham at that sort of time they had a very comprehensive display of the Teach Yourself series books. Most bookshops had a selection, often the more common ones, like Teach Yourself French and so on. So when I saw Teach Yourself Old English I bought it on the basis that there it was, I might never see that on offer ever again, buy it while I have the opportunity to do so.

Some years later, I was in a bookshop and I wanted to ask a member of staff something and I approached a man who was putting Teach Yourself books in a vertical rotating stand.

He politely explained that he did not work there, he was a representative of Teach Yourself books. We had a discuusion about them. He said that most of them were written as a labour of love by the author of the book. He said that most of the sales were of people who became interested in something, bought a book about it, but never read past the first chapter.

William

I suppose that it depends what one classes as very exceptional circumstances.

Without a computer I would have a big problem obtaining a food supply.

William

The internet, accessed by the computer William needs, can present a virtual shop, where one can browse and make choices. The telephone does not conveniently do that; no need to list why.

I have never known of that being available. Please say where that happened.

We are discussing inflation, we are discussing what items are needs as contrasted with what are not needs but perhaps desired.

There is, as far as I aware, no restriction about the discussion only being related to people with very limited income.

But in relation to Joe's list there is nothing on there apart from a computer that I would buy even if my income were much larger than it is.

I tend to buy relatively low-priced things that have some sort of special interest for me, such as what is notionally a custom photo greetings card that is in fact a print of my artwork that I produced on my computer, then I framed it in an oak effect frame delivered with the grocery. Total cost under £10. That, as it is a print of my own art, is of more interest to me than buying an expensive framed print by someone else. During the last two years I have bought several such custom greetings cards and frames. But it is a very low cost compared to the electricity bill, but i do like a warm house. Though I suppose those framed cards could be said to not be needs.

I suppose Joe's list could be extended by adding framed artist's prints and framed original paintings and things like ornate glass vases and so on. Yet not only expensive items like those.

William

I cannot see the likes of Tescos taking orders by telephone, I maybe wrong, but it just does not seem that would be the case. My mother back in the 1960s used to phone her groceries through to a local trader for delivery every Friday.

In those days, choice was very limited, for example, only two or three brands of jams, and a few different fruits, say. As I remember.

Most grocery stores would have a counter assistant who would be asked for, let's say, a jar of jam. Without going to the shelf and taking one of each sort to show the customer, the choice would be limited to what the customer knew of the stock, and what the assistant could explain.

Or one went to the butchers, and asked for a particular cut.  If you phoned, you would get what the butcher provided, and the nature of the cut could, I say, could, depend on the relationship of the customer with the butcher. Nowadays, my wife will carefully examine several pieces of meat before choosing one. More choice there.

If one person buys the supermarket's own label version of something rather than the branded version to save money, there we go.

But if two million people buy the supermarket's own label version of something rather than the branded version to save money, does that result in some of the people at the factory that makes the branded version losing their job?

Why are own label versions cheaper?

William

No advertising costs.

As Joe points out, the manufacturer is likely to be the same for both products.