Quote (Black XistenZ @ Mar 25 2022 07:58am)
The underlying reason for the surging prices on the housing market, which go back over 10 years, is the money printing by the central banks. All the central bank money has fueled asset price inflation, exacerbated by some socio-economic macro trends (rural flight, a shift from an industrial to a knowledge-based society, high levels of immigration which also tends to focus on cities).
Of course the "money printer go brrrr"-response to the pandemic has only made this problem worse. No idea by how much though.
I would be very cautious when it comes to polls like these. People tend to underestimate the sting of personal sacrifice while they aren't suffering from it yet.
Moreover, poll questions like this one, which put a moral cause against personal self-interest, are particularly prone to social desirability bias.
This poll reminds me of these polls about masks where some 60-80% of respondents said they'd continue wearing masks once mandates are lifted. We all know how that turned out...
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Regarding your last sentence: the Russian arms industry is largely autarkic. They have the factories and the natural resources to keep going. Likewise, the big military investments, namely buying tanks and jets, already lie in the past. On the economic side of things, Putin needs just two things to keep up the ongoing war: oil for his tanks (which they have in spades) and roubles to pay his soldiers (the central bank can just print them if necessary). Simply put, it would be foolish to expect an embargo on Russian oil and natural gas to hamper the Russian ability to continue this war in the short-term. It would take many months, if not years, until the loss of heavy material which cannot be replaced by Russia's arms industry or surging inflation due to too much money printing put an economic end to this war.
It's also fairly easy to be idealistic in wealthy countries that even with this war extending for lets a few years, the impact is not that crazy relatively speaking. I feel like in the UK or the US we can absorb price hikes on oil or food because those costs are not a huge percentage of our disposable income, it has an impact, but it's not the difference between us eating or starving. That doesn't hold true in most of the world. I don't think places in Africa hold to these type of lofty notions. Who cares about standing for freedom thousands of miles away, in a war you don't really care about whn I have to spend double on food, which was already a huge part of my disposable income spending to begin with. Poll the average Egyptian and i'm sure he'll care much more about food prices.