Almost inevitably, economic turning points tend to be more obvious with the benefit of hindsight than they are at the time, but even the blindest of observers couldn’t fail to notice that we are in the midst of just such an earthquake right now.

More than 30 years of disinflationary forces have given way to a veritable tsunami of inflationary ones, with potentially far-reaching implications for cross-border migration, labour market bargaining power, the size of the state, the public finances, corporate profits, and much else besides.

Grown complacent on the idea of permanently low inflation, Western governments came to believe that almost any economic problem could be fixed by simply turning on the central bank printing press. For a while it seemed to work, spectacularly so during the pandemic when burgeoning, war-time-like government deficits were monetised with apparent abandon. Pound for pound, the Bank of England matched the great outpouring of debt issuance with purchases in the market, such that today the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street owns around a third of the national debt.

We were not alone. Virtually the world over, each economic shock has been met with another lorry load of new money – around £25 trillion of the stuff since the financial crisis alone.

But that age is now over, and with its passing comes the grim realisation that it was not a cost-free exercise after all. With each further uptick in inflation, and with each increase in short-term interest rates as the Bank of England belatedly attempts to turn the fire hoses on resurgent inflation, debt servicing costs mount further into the stratosphere – a staggering £83 billion next financial year, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, or more than four times higher than the pre-pandemic level. This would make it the fourth largest item of Government expenditure after the NHS, the state pension and education.

But all of this is just detail. The bigger picture looks more worrying still. Spanish inflation in March was almost 10 per cent, and even in Germany, pathologically averse to rising prices after the last century’s two hyperinflations, inflation was 7.6 per cent. Lest you think the UK is getting off lightly, with an inflation rate of “just” 6.2 per cent in February, best not to gloat; we’ll soon be up there with the rest of them.

One thing we can be pretty sure of, given how hopelessly wrong-footed policymakers have been, is that inflation will peak higher and prove a deal more persistent than currently anticipated. Already, forecasts are being urgently revisited in light of China’s decision to reimpose strict lockdowns amid a renewed outbreak of Covid.

Beijing arrogantly believed it led the world with its zero tolerance approach to Covid, but its vaccines have proved largely ineffective, and unable to admit its self-proclaimed “gold standard” might have been wrong, it is now stuck with it, exacerbating shortages in global supply chains and further adding to the inflationary pressures.

The price of virtually everything is going up, but particularly concerning is food. This is tough enough for the poorer elements in society even in advanced economies, but in the developing and third world it is particularly acutely felt and is nearly always politically destabilising.

Back in 2007, the soaring price of corn caused a full-blown riot in Mexico City; the so-called Tortilla Crisis. Exacerbated by war-induced crop failure in Ukraine, we can expect much worse this time around, including famine in some parts of the world. This in turn is likely to lead to a fresh migration crisis on Europe’s borders over the next several years.

In Germany, the cost of weaning consumers and industry off Russian oil and gas is forecast to be anywhere between 0.5 and 6 per cent of GDP. The range is so large because there is no prior experience of such a rupture, so it’s basically just guesswork.

The case for an immediate boycott, even if Putin doesn’t impose his own ban, is powerfully made in some quarters on the basis that the short, sharp shock approach at least has the merit of getting the adjustment over and done with quickly. Ultimately, Germany will survive the end of the co-dependency much better than Russia.

Industrial rationing next winter, with many factories forced onto short working weeks or extended holidays, is widely regarded as inevitable if the present standoff over Russian demands for payment in roubles persists.

In the end, there is no getting away from it; the imported nature of today’s inflation, given wings by the easy money policies of the last 20 years, is going to make us all poorer.

Who takes the brunt of this pain – capital or labour – has yet to be properly confronted, but with the labour market so tight, my guess is that the hit to corporate profits will be bigger than to wages. In the public sector and the utilities, we can also expect a resurgence in union activism.

No two decades are the same, but the parallels with the 1970s grow stronger by the day. As then, we’ve largely ourselves to blame; too many years of papering over the cracks has left us cruelly exposed.