Tag: cost of living

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Economics Politics & government

[2970] Politics of living costs and the inevitable language of austerity

Extraordinarily, the Economy Minister has been holding press conference for every consumer price index release in the past few months. Extraordinary, because in the past, CPI releases were treated with silence by the government, and from time to time, cited in largely unread government press statements. But the new Minister, Rafizi Ramli, is focused on cost of living issues. He sees CPI statistics as a way to regularly talk about it.

He is not alone in focusing on living costs. Information Minister, Fahmi Fadzil in an interview recently said:

“The people don’t really care about the slogan, they care about the cost of living, prices of goods and internet access. Therefore, it is essential for every minister and ministry to act immediately to resolve issues of concern to the people.” [Fahmi: ‘Govt to solve people’s issues through Malaysia Madani concept’. Bernama. New Straits Times. January 25 2023]

A very, very short history of living costs politics

Component parties of Pakatan Harapan (and previously Pakatan Rakyat) have a long history of stressing on living costs politics. When energy prices were high in the late 2000s, DAP, Pas and PKR were pressing on the cost-of-living buttons furiously, and that played well to popular anger at that time.

Furthermore, the focus on living costs is a way to shift attention away from race and religion, towards more welfare-based issues. That shift is something to be welcomed, definitely.

Regression in policy

But as I have written earlier, while living costs deserve attention, the the politics of living costs is counterproductive in many ways. Such politics is the reason why policy progress Malaysia made in the past 10-15 years with respect to welfare policy has been partially reversed. Specifically, I am referring to the shift from subsidies to cash transfers. Cash transfers in many ways superior to subsidies in terms of welfare enhancing. Therefore, blanket subsidies and cash transfers are meant to be competing policies.

Yet, now, we have both and the government for the past 5 years have taken the two as complementary. The confused policy mix is proving to be expansive. And it does not help that the government is scared of new taxes, and prefer hard-to-implement-but-low/unstable-revenue taxes to easier-and-high/stable-revenue ones, which causes a severe fiscal constraint.

Rafizi, who previously was a strong believer in blanket petrol subsidies, appears to have walked back, perhaps after realizing the state of government finance, He, along with Prime Minister-Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim, are now talking about targeted subsidies instead, which has been discussed since at least 2019, not long after blanket subsidies were reintroduced. But having both targeted subsidies and cash transfers are still a confused policy mix. The ideal would be to move to cash transfers fully.

Politics of living costs almost always means large subsidies

The politics of living costs is counterproductive because, with its logical framework, the easiest way to address it is through subsidies and price controls. Other ways—wage hikes for one, or competition regulations—are much harder to implement and takes longer to be realized. The thing with subsidies is (in some ways cash transfers too, but at least cash transfers is much, much more efficient in enhancing welfare while it can always be clawed back via taxes if the wrong persons received it), it tends to take resources away from other things, like funding healthcare, investing and maintenance infrastructure or building defense capabilities in a region has been taking peace too much for granted.

You cannot solve these structural long-term things, if politics of living costs that is always in the now, is the ultimate priority.

The language of austerity

Since such politics takes resources away from many things, it sets the tone of belt-tightening: pay cuts, no pay, RM1.5 trillion government debt (and liabilities), etc. When there is so little left for anything else, usually, a lot of people would be scared and pull back what they could, except subsidies.

Anwar Ibrahim, at a forum in Jakarta, quipped that Malaysia was no longer the country of the 1990s in response to a request by an Indonesia luminary for more Malaysian scholarship for Indonesian students.

Rafizi, just this week, said:

“It is like an overweight person. You know your ideal weight and you constantly remind yourself that you are getting worse,” he said at a forum titled ‘Resetting the Malaysian economy’ organised by Parliament.

“The solution is simple. You need to eat less. If you want to eat a lot, you need to run more. Doctors, gyms will tell you that. Most struggle despite the diagnosis.

“That’s where we are as a country. With the current fiscal trajectory, things will get worse. It takes a lot of courage, political will and cohesion with all stakeholders (to carry out changes).”

[Fixing economy like fat person trying to lose weight, says Rafizi. Joel Shasitiran. FMT. January 27 2023]

Fat. Diet. Those are words one typically associates with austerity. We do not have austerity, but using this kind of language, it would impress many that there is one.

And the source of this language, and the wider fiscal problem the government faces is the politics of living costs.

This second Pakatan Harapan government appears to be repeating some of the mistakes of the first Pakatan Harapan government: too much focus on government financial burden that it was accused of running austerity policies, despite the fact, clearly, there was no austerity at play.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[2951] Politics of prices is counter-productive

There has been a global supply constraint of various kinds for at least a year now. The supply chain disruption was expected by many—I quickly noted the post-war Malayan supply-side crisis as a parallel. Nevertheless, few people expected the constraints would be this tight for so long. I certainly did not.

The tightness has slipped over into the Malaysian consumer market. Chicken, beef, vegetables are the usual suspects.

The waitlists for cars are long due to a persistent global chip shortage: I test drove a Peugeot several weeks back and that experience to me underscores how modern ground vehicles these days are more and more an electronic device than a mechanical one. I knew vehicles had an ever increasing electronics (and electrical) components to them. Several months earlier, I read a report showing how the share of electronic cost relative to total car manufacturing cost has gone up drastically in the past 20 years, from less than 1% to maybe 40%-60%. But there is a difference between reading it, and riding the thing. The dashboard is a computer screen popping more information any older car could show. When I say dashboard, I mean a dashboard full of dynamic data, with customizable menu. The air-conditioning controls are only accessible through a separate central LCD screen, which also controls other aspects of the car. Even the brakes can be controlled by the computer, along with so many other things.

It is not just chip and electronic components are in short supply. Somebody on Twitter jokingly said “oh, this is the chip shortages they were talking about” in reference to shortages of fries at McDonald’s in Malaysia and Japan.

Consumer prices are rising, and it would have risen higher if it was not for price control mechanism and subsidies in place in Malaysia. This is readily observed from the following chart, where consumer prices are not rising as fast as producer prices. The latter is a proxy to global prices.

PPI vs CPI

Nevertheless, despite enjoying the shield, consumers have been complaining about rising living costs. They demand actions. More than a few activists and politicians have demanded the same.

All governments are sensitive to such criticisms and this government, especially as weak, incompetent and clueless as it is, is doubly so. The opposition has been relentless in their criticism. Some Pakatan Harapan supporters have highlighted how their government played a better and proactive role in addressing prices, and go on to claim a Pakatan Harapan government would have been far more effective in managing cost of living problem. And when Pakatan Harapan was in power, Barisan Nasional and Pas, on top of their usual racist rhetoric, also attacked the government for rising living costs regardless of whether prices was actually rising (prices then were actually very stable due to the imposition of an overly generous blanket fuel subsidy).

I dislike politics of prices. While it has its uses in cases when there are monopoly abuses and regulatory hurdles (the drop in broadband prices are a great exception), in the current climate prices are largely out of the government hands. The truth is, if Pakatan Harapan was in power, they too would not be able to do much about it either.

But that does not matter. Such is the politics of prices.

The problem is with the supply itself and the players of politics of prices simply ignore the cause of the problem. Some even go has far as misdiagnosing it as unhelpfully as greed.

A supply-driven crisis like this requires investment to loosen up the supply chain: expansion of ports, new technology to hasten production and delivery, new plants, more workers, etc. Yet, the aversion for price hikes have led to large government subsidies (think fuel), which takes fund away from productive investment purposes that are needed to address the supply chain disruption.

Politics of prices not only ignore the source of price pressures Malaysian consumers are experiencing. They ignore wages. Prices and wages are part of the same coin: wages are prices of labor. Notwithstanding issues relating to income distribution between employees and employers, and technology-driven price cuts among others, the politics of prices suppresses price growth, and through it, risk of suppressing wage growth.

More than once, the politics of prices have led to calls for wage cuts. The targets have been high-paying professionals and ministers (and their unqualified advisors), but too often, it has gone a little bit too far. Mahathir as the 7th Prime Minister for instance, is a fan of pay cuts and that unfortunately set the tone for the whole economy when he was in power. Coupled with his obsession with government debt (government debt and transparency were a problem), and his history with the gold dinar movement, it felt like he wanted a deflationary environment.

All that set the tone for austerity. There was really no austerity in place—government spending went up and the economy expanded—but the narrative set by the PM made it difficult to convince many out there that that was no austerity. And the economy, even as it expanded, took heed of the deflationary sentiment.

Categories
Economics

[2726] The Big Mac Index is not about cheap burgers, NST

The Big Mac Index is one of those funky things in the world of economics that a lot of people think they know about it, but they actually do not. The New Straits Times on Saturday featured the  Index in a big way to show that Malaysia has the third cheapest Big Mac in the world.[1] Unfortunately for the newspaper, in doing so, it proves to the world that they do not know what the Index is about. And they did that in a grand style, by putting it on the front page.

The Big Mac Index by the Economist does have a list of Big Mac prices from a number of countries. But the point of the list is not to aid burger hunters searching for the cheapest Big Mac in the world. Rather, the point is to give the readers a feel of how overvalued or undervalued a currency is, typically against the US dollar (these days, the Economist has introduced multiple other reference currencies).

The Index is designed to demonstrate a theory called the purchasing power parity. The PPP, although not exactly the Law of One Price, pretty much operates on the same logic the Law of One Price operates. If the PPP holds in the world of Big Macs, then all Big Macs would cost the same. When there is divergence in prices between two… national… burgers, then it suggests that either one or the other is overvalued or undervalued.

So, if Malaysia does have the third cheapest Big Mac in the Index, what the Index is telling you is that the ringgit is the third most undervalued currency in the Index (against the US dollar, the reference currency).

The NST seized on the word cheapest to give an idea that it is cheap to live in Malaysia. “Malaysia has been ranked one of the cheapest places in the world to purchase a Big Mac,” goes the very, very bad article. In a companion article that is equally awful:

Independent economic macro-analyst Prof Dr Hoo Ke Ping said while it was true that some might find prices of food items to have risen somewhat, Malaysians should be thankful that they can still enjoy relatively cheap meals compared with other countries.

He said the Big Mac index was proof that essential items in the country were still relatively cheaper than other countries.

“Although some prices of food items, petrol and electricity have gone up, our prices are still cheap.”

Hoo said it was a misconception that prices of essential items had gone up, adding the speculation was sensationalised, over-hyped and not fully defined. [Big Mac index an accurate indicator. New Straits Times. February 15 2014]

You get the idea what the NST is trying to say. It is really a propaganda hack and not actual news. NST itself has no understanding of the Index, much less of the PPP. It does not care about the economic rationale behind the Index. NST is only forcing the economics to fit into the paper’s preferred narrative, which is horribly flawed.

As for the professor, I present to you, a big chart of the monthly YoY changes of all of the major components of the consumer price index throughout 2013:

big ass chart

Please do not tell me that the prices of essential goods have not gone up (no, I am not referring to the alcohol and tobacco component although I do understand, those are essential items for some people. For the majority, look at the rising food and more jarringly, transport inflation).

Now, it may or it may not be cheap to live in Malaysia but using the Index to demonstrate that is just not the way.

To make that argument on living cost, you need to make at least one more step and that is to find the income of the median Malaysian. From there, you can calculate just how many burgers that Malaysian can buy with his or her salary. Compare that to the same metric in another country and only then you can say whether it is cheap to live in Malaysia.

The way the reporter writes it, it is cheap to live in Malaysia if you earn in stronger currencies like the US dollar, which is true and you can definitely know that from the Index.

But most Malaysians do not earn in dollar. That fact really makes the NST’s argument irrelevant.

Finally:

Accountant Muhammad Aiman Sofian said lower salary levels in Malaysia meant that the ratio of expenses to income was smaller compared with other countries. [Big Mac index an accurate indicator. New Straits Times. February 15 2014]

You have got to be kidding me… that just goes against empirical evidences from all around the world.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — KUALA LUMPUR: MALAYSIA has been ranked one of the cheapest places in the world to purchase a Big Mac, according to The Economist.

The British news magazine’s annual “Big Mac” Index, which gauges if global currencies are at their correct level, has ranked Malaysia third behind India and South Africa as the cheapest place in the world to purchase the McDonald’s signature burger.

“The price paid for a Big Mac in Malaysia is RM7.40, which is equivalent to US$2.23 when converted using the global exchange rates.

“This amount is lower when compared with the actual price of a Big Mac that is sold in the United States for US$4.62, indicating a 50 per cent difference.

“In other words, the Big Mac sold in Malaysia is half the price of the same burger sold in the US,” the magazine revealed.[Malaysia is 3rd cheapest place to buy a Big Mac. New Straits Times. February 15 2014]