“CORE INFLATION” IS AN ELITE SCAM THAT PRETENDS MALTESE FAMILIES DON’T EAT, DRIVE, OR LIVE
By Economist
This blog gave a faithful rendition of the Eurostat number of annual inflation, with a euro-area average of 2.8%, and lower for Malta.
I pen this in reply to the article to explain why the inflation numbers are so low on paper around Europe.
Official inflation statistics in Malta and across Europe ignore the true cost of owning a home. Statisticians treat houses as investments, not expenses. Yet in Malta home ownership is exceptionally high. Most families stay in the same property for decades. They may never move. For them a house is a lifelong expense, not a speculative asset.
Maintenance bills mount. A plumber in Malta often charges a €50–€80 call-out fee before even stepping through the door. A simple repair can then add another €100–€200. These costs rise steadily. They remain excluded from the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices by design. Maltese households therefore feel the gap more sharply than many other Europeans.
The same blindness applies to technology. Nearly every Maltese adult owns a mobile phone. In 2020, before Covid hit, an iPhone cost about half what it costs today. Quality adjustments in the statistics treat the higher price as improvement rather than pure inflation. It is as if the latest iPhone arrives free of inflated charge.
Core inflation figures frequently strip out energy and unprocessed food. These are called “volatile”. The result is an artificial picture. Petrol in Malta hovered near €1.20 a litre before the pandemic. Fresh beef that once sold for under €5 a kilo now costs more. A bag of mixed salad vegetables that was €1.50 can now reach €3. Official figures assume cars run on water. They assume households buy no fresh vegetables, fruit or meat. Instead, we are imagined to live on bread, cold cuts and Twistees.
The experts who compile these numbers are not primarily there to keep us informed. Their processed figures seek to soothe rather than reveal.
Citizens should trust their own eyes and their own experience. Have prices exploded since the Covid pandemic? Has technology soared in cost? What about the price of meat? Ordinary people shop every week. They are the real experts on the prices they face.
Political parties play the same game. Governments insist inflation is well contained. Oppositions claim the opposite. When roles reverse, the arguments reverse with them. Both sides specialise in deceptive analyses.
Professional fees offer another example. A routine dental check-up that cost €40 five years ago is higher today. A simple legal consultation can run €150 and higher an hour. Many transactions leave no formal receipt. These services rarely register in the official basket.
The moral is straightforward. You know from your daily life whether inflation in Malta runs at only 2 per cent a year. Taxpayers fund the statistical offices. Too often the product is a smoothed narrative rather than the full picture. Malta remains a small island operating under the European Union’s Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. For many families that index has become a mirage that ignores reality on the ground. From 2,000 kilometers away, Brussels seeks to impress on you the true prices in your home town and on your dinner table.
Government represents power in the hands of the few to manipulate the lives of the many under the guise of human rights, economics, statistics, and increasing nonsense that fall apart under the astute observations of the common man.