Bank of England’s chief economist has passed the buck onto the working classes by blaming greedy plebs for spiralling inflation.
Huw Pill, whose average salary is around £180,000, said the average family has a "reluctance to accept" being poorer, while the "pass the parcel" of workers demanding wage rises, and UK businesses passing on higher costs, were fuelling inflation.
Britons’ refusal "to take our share" is one of the main reasons behind soaring record-high inflation rates, Pill contended, even though wage inflation remains below price inflation.
"You don't need to be much of an economist to realise that if what you're buying has gone up a lot relative to what you're selling, you're going to be worse off," Pill said.
"Somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they're worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers."
He added: "What we're facing now is that reluctance to accept that. That pass-the-parcel game that's going on here, that game is one that's generating inflation, and that part of inflation can persist."
Pill’s point on businesses fuelling greedflation has some merit, though small businesses needn’t take all of the blame.
Tesco was accused of making an ‘obscene profit’ just a week ago and Barclays expects Sainsbury’s to report £685mln or just short of the top end of guidance issued in January.
Albert Edwards, a global strategist at Societe Generale, claimed that UK corporations have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an “excuse” to raise prices and expand profit margins to new heights.
Edwards said he had never seen anything like the “unprecedented” and “astonishing” levels of corporate greedflation in his four decades working in finance.
Pill’s comments were rebuked by union members, the Federation of Small Businesses and other financial experts.
Amanda Gearing at the GMB union called his comments "absolutely outrageous to be honest, asking some of our lowest paid workers in this country, not to take a pay increase when inflation is so high".
People didn't need lectures over pay, said TUC general secretary Paul Nowak, who called for a plan to "make sure workers get their fair share".
Thomas Moore, senior investment director at Abrdn, was partially sympathetic to Pill’s comments, telling the BBC: "You can see that underlying all of this, he has got a point which is as long as inflation stays high, we are going to demand higher wages and as long as we demand higher wages, inflation is going to stay high."
Perhaps we really will be eating cricket burgers in the future.