The Trinity Inquirer

Founded August 27th, 2020

Contents:

- $31 Watermelons at Woolies - NewsPage 1&2

- The Place of Monarchy in SocietyOpinion - Pages 3&4

- The Individual vs Society - Big Questions - Page 5

- Art Club - Clubs & Societies - Page 6

- To Orbit and Beyond - Opinion - Pages 7&8

- Challenge Yourself - CompetitionsPage 9

- Greek Philosopher WordsearchPuzzles - Page 10

Contributors:

Rob Zhang, Samuel Shaw, Charlie Sheldrick, Edward Peng, James Egan, Mrs Angela Kotsiras, Lucas van den Berg, Alastair Murphy

On a frosty evening in late May, I stumbled into the local Woolies at Camberwell Junction to do my weekly grocery run. I was dying after my gym workout and was looking to quench my thirst with the remaining $10 left. Maybe watermelons will do, I thought to myself. When I saw the shining, yellow price tag of $30.80 underneath the watermelons, I almost fell to the ground like Mr White from Breaking Bad (That is fifth season, episode 14 for you Breaking Bad fans).

In recent times, it is not a secret that Australia has struggled to fight its war against inflation. The notorious $11 iceberg lettuce ‘scandal’ of 2022 which even saw the involvement of Queensland police might ring a bell or two, but in case you have not realized, Australia’s CPI (a common indicator for rates of inflation) is rising at an all-time high of 6.8%. If you are not familiar with the term inflation, it just means how fast the price of goods and services are rising in Australia, and if you do not think a

‘measly’ 6.8% is that bad, the last time Australia suffered such high rates of inflation was in the late 80s to early 90s.

I sound a lot like a boomer, but given that our parents are still paying for your food, school fees and necessities, we are quite out-of-touch with just how much inflation affects our spending decisions. Examining root causes of social economic issues around us is not only imperative for learning, but it is also an interesting matter.

In neo-classical economics, prices are set by two things: supply and demand. To put it simply, when there is an excess want for something, or a fall in the supply of it, the price for it goes up. This is quite easy to imagine – If there is only one person wanting to buy a house, it would sell at a lower price. If there were multiple people bidding for it at an auction, you would expect the price for it to go up. This is an increase in demand.

Conversely, if there are lots of houses for people to buy, houses would be pretty-cheap, but if there was only one house in the entirety of Melbourne, you would expect it to sell for somewhere in the high millions.

This is a decrease in supply.

Now let’s take a deeper dive into the reasons behind Australia’s recent inflation.

The Russian economy relies largely on energy exports. Its crude oil export reached 10.5 million barrels per day in 2021, making up to 14% of the world’s total supply. When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Australia, along with many other Western nations, imposed a 35% tariff (tax on imports) on all Russian energy imports, making energy resources more expensive to purchase from overseas. Energy prices are a critical factor in the total level of aggregate supply in an economy. Energy imports