Tag: cost of living

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Mediawatch

More on Thrift

One of the books I’m reading deals with the issue that we were talking about on this blog yesterday (“Thrifty with facts”). “The Price of Everything” by Eduardo Porter is an interesting study into the “true cost of living” and attempts to give an interesting perspective on otherwise mundane facts. My original post had been triggered by the fact that Maltastar deemed it fit to compare average wages in Luxembourg and Malta ostensibly because the evident gap would mean that the Maltese and only the Maltese have it worse off all round.

One of Porter’s chapters deals with how firms selling goods operate on the market in such a manner as to obviate the possibilities of the consumer to purchase comparatively. In other words, firms will go through great lengths to ensure that the consumer is not in a position to compare the price of their products with those of their competitors. We see this when a price is camouflaged under a pile of add-ons, bonuses, offers etc. Another of Porter’s interesting observations is that different brackets of the population have different shopping habits for different reasons. High wage earners give less value to the time spent comparing prices and tend to shop off the cuff while low wage earners are prepared to invest time in order to get the bargain.

Studies (I know that vague term is ugly but give it a chance) have shown that the same product might sell for very different prices depending on the customer involved. I do not need to believe some obscure study. SATURN, an electronics goods operating in Luxembourg has proven to be quite a good example of this practice  over the past few months. I have noticed that anything from headphones to in-car hands-free sets can vary in price depending on whether you opt to shop at Saturn in the city-centre (Gare area) or whether you drive to Esch-Belval (20 minutes highway).

It’s not just electronic goods either. Malta has now got Lidl as a household name. Luxembourg too has its different tiers – from ALDI (think lidl but cheaper – yes, cheaper) to Delhaize via Cora, Cactus and Auchan (that’s Pavi in Malta) you would have to command a panoply of comparative programs in order to get your really thrifty shopping list.

Am I making a point here? Well yes. It might be worth reflecting that when we speak of Malta’s consumers we are not talking of one homogenous block. Times may have changed from when Mintoff’s budget was eagerly awaited in order to know the going rate for the next year for a can of sardines but that does not mean that consumers are not still a varied bunch that are daily tackling the traps and offers of a myriad of shopping establishments.

One instant in the movie the Iron Lady struck me (or was it “The Road to Finchley”). Thatcher knew the price of butter in the stores (she was after all a grocer’s daughter) but her fellow politicians did not. I wonder whether some intrepid reporter could cold question Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Muscat and find out whether they know the going rate for a carton of milk or butter (even if it’s the fake kind). Before our politicians can fan the flames of discontent with regard to the cost of living they would do well to show a little more understanding of the situation.

Is there open competition in Malta? Are your Pavi’s and Arkadia’s and Smart’s providing a range of prices that might be beneficial to the consumer? That too must be taken into account. Before we look outside our shores and focus on how much money is ending up in other people’s pockets it would be interesting to know who is spending what and where with the money that ends up in our own.

Feedback is welcome. Meanwhile here is an excerpt from the Porter book.

According to a study of Denver shoppers families that make more than 70,000 dollars a year pay 5 per cent more for the same set of goods than families making less than 30,000 dollars. Singles without children pay 10 per cent less than families with five members or more. Families headed by people in their early forties pay up to 8 per cent more than those in their early twenties or late sixties. Retirees are much more careful shoppers than middle-aged people. They search dutifully for the best deal and end up paying nearly the same amount for the same product. People in middle-age, by contrast, buy more carelessly. The prices they pay are all over the map.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Thrifty with Facts

Thanks to an Evarist Bartolo link on facebook I came across this article on Maltastar that compares the wages between Malta and Luxembourg taking data from a recent survey based on “average wages” and the Purchasing Power Parity. While it is interesting to look at figures consisting solely of wages as averaged out in relation to how they could be spent in the US it is obvious that a peek at the utility of that same wage in the country where it is earned would give a less skewed picture.

So while Maltastar is busy comparing Malta’s average wage of 1,808 dollars per month to Luxembourg’s whopping 4,089 dollars (top of the world) per month it would do well to look out for other stuff such as the actual cost of living in those countries.

I could not find Luxembourg or Malta on the famous Economist Big Mac Index that is based on the One Price comparison for good. I don’t frequent McD mainly because of my allergy to gluten so I would not know the prices myself. I did found this site called numbeo however that does a cool comparison thingy between states. Sure enough I confirmed what I was suspecting and here are the facts for your perusal.

Just for the sake of perspective look at the rental costs for a 1 bedroom apartment – Luxembourg average is 950€ per month while Malta is 350€. As for buying property in Luxembourg compare the 5500€ price per square metre to Malta’s 2500 €.

This is not to say that Malta’s salaries are great or that prices cannot be more competitive but rather to point out that sticking to comparing wages is deceptive and intentionally portrays a fraction of the picture. Just to give you an idea of how relative the issue is, some unions of the EU fonctionnaires based in Luxembourg have been complaining that the salaries for Luxembourg workers are equal to those based in Belgium even though the cost of living in Luxembourg is much higher.

As in the case of the gas price hike J’accuse’s point is that rather than selective charts to fuel the discontent of the voter what we really need to see is what the political parties gearing up for next election are offering on their programmes so that we may be able to assess if any part of it includes – oh hope – solutions or at least attempts at solutions.

And by the way Varist, the guys at Maltastar COULD make an effort rather than cut and paste Ruth Alexander’s article from the BBC site. Next time you decide to cut and paste you should not leave out this damning assessment on the reliability of the figures:

In truth, the economists at the ILO have had to rely on very patchy statistics. Data is missing for some countries – even a country as large as Nigeria, for example. And also, the economists at the ILO are only counting wage earners.

They exclude huge numbers of people who appear in the poverty statistics but not in the calculations for the average wage – pensioners, children and stay-at-home parents, for example, and even the self-employed.

The number of self-employed is huge. In developed countries about 90% of working people are paid employees, but that figure is lower in many developing countries. For example, in South Asia, where many people are self employed or independent farmers, just 25% of workers are salaried.

The conclusion drawn by Ruth Alexander in her article must not have made for comfortable reading at Maltastar because it defeats the very (loose) point they were trying to make. Maltastar’s selective reporting (cutting and pasting) centred on comparing Malta’s wages with the best in the world. In truth the report concludes that ” that the worldwide level of economic development is in fact still pretty low, in spite of the huge affluence that we see in some places.”

Essentially an uncomfortable truth that the economic pains that are being suffered in Malta are (unfortunately) a symptom of a “worldwide level of economic development”. Sadly for Maltastar and Varist, it’s not GonziPN who is to blame.

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Articles

J'accuse : Living Expenses

It’s not just George Soros who thinks that the ECB might have chosen an inappropriate time for hiking its interest rates. For a very egoistic reason, I was pretty miffed too. A hike in interest rates and a parallel sucker punch delivered to the cost of living in Luxembourg struck right at the moment when I had just moved house and ‘inaugurated’ a new mortgage. That’s some bad Karma all right. The ugly monster of inflation threatens to wreak further havoc on our lives in the short term but hey… it’s the economy, stupid.

While my ‘problems’ might be limited to a shift in figures behind a decimal point, there are others whose problems are related to the “Cost of Staying Alive” (COSA). “The what?” I hear you ask. The COSA is a raw and dangerous version of the cost of living where the line between scraping a living and sinking to the bottom of an ocean is measured in the units of faith, hope and desperation. While we rely on the number crunchers in Frankfurt to make things right, those who measure their daily travails on the COSA index will depend on a multitude of decision makers and opinion shapers that range from the highest politician to the lowest common voter.

Blame

One of the side effects of the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa has been a worrying reopening of the borders that had been so effectively ‘sealed’ in the past by the partners in crime of our political establishment. With the likes of Gaddafi concentrating on more pressing issues than the policing of their countries’ borders (the Cost of Blackmailing Index), it was inevitable that the Mediterranean would refill with the Boats of Hope that ferry the COSA people over to the lands of the free. In the end, the Mare Nostrum is less and less a sea of convergence and more and more a Stygian theatre where many souls are drawing their final check before leaving this world.

In Greek mythology, Styx was the underground river that had to be crossed to reach the underworld in the afterlife. ‘Styx’ meant hate and detestation and the Mediterranean theatre has increasingly featured scenes of backstabbing detestation and an unbrotherly inability to cooperate successfully in the face of troubles. This week we watched the drama unfold of a Malta – Italy blame game during which time the souls of many men, women and children were lost. A little further up north, Sarkozy’s France (the one that acted swiftly to save lives in Benghazi) was protesting vividly with Italy for its practice of issuing Schengen permits to the Tunisians who had fled their country’s ills.

By the time Sarkozy and Berlusconi had patched up their differences, it was on condition that EU aid to Tunisia would be conditional on the patrolling of its borders. Same old, same old. Then on Thursday we also had a historic first when the island of Lampedusa pulled off the best Malta Bus Driver impression and yelled “Full Up” on sighting a new boatload of immigrants. The brave men on patrol boat P61 had to chug back to Malta having been shown that even the centuries-old laws of the sea are now being flaunted in the name of egoistic bigotry.


There’s no place like home

The blame game is played out at the expense of values. There remains no real reference point. The basic unit of the Cost of Staying Alive Index is life itself but this value too can be diluted if one’s life starts outweighing another. Gozo Bishop Mario Grech has rightly sounded the warning signal on that count − going so far as having to warn that: “Had some birds been killed, much would, rightly, have been said, while, in this case so many people had died, and many people stayed silent”. It was a biblical moment − testified in the New Testament. I looked it up… Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

Well even Jesus said so. Lately, both the big J and our heavenly Father are being unnecessarily inconvenienced on other matters. All the matters display our society’s continuous struggle to update its identity and feel comfortable with itself. Our politicians are engaged in another blame game on the divorce front − now it’s about lost votes. I’m still waiting for Joseph Muscat to shed some tears about the fact that the expat community still has to be shuttled to Malta instead of exercising its vote in an embassy or by post − what do the 2,800 have that we don’t?

While the politicians blame each other for the business of the dating of a writ and play up dubious constitutional disquisitions, the lost souls in this case are the ever increasing numbers of those who feel unrepresented by this farce. Then there was the AG’s appeal in the Realtà proceedings − I’ve stated elsewhere that the appeal itself will give us a necessary clarification on the state of the law on obscenity and pornography. Why the AG had to inconvenience any deities on this issue is rather baffling though.

Slovenly

Our national identity is in a period of great flux. How ingrained are the Catholic values of neighbourly love in our lives? When we look in the mirror do we really understand the image that we see? Which snapshot of our community is really us? Is it the police who defy the rules of logic and prohibit the sale of alcohol in a concert on some disproportionate pretext? Is it the hunters who plan to defy the Spring Hunting rules? Is it the spewers of hate on online billboards?

Is it the churchgoer who cannot digest the fact that the last words of a Nigerian soul on a sinking Boat of Hope were “Please Jesus Save Me”? Is it a politician who abuses the word “conscience” one time too many? Is it the political party that devotes more time to deception than to creative proposition?

What image represents the Maltese psyche? Can we sit down and write an essay portraying what goes on in an average Maltese man’s mind? Will we be comfortable with it? And in the end… will we end up in court defending the essay from the accusation of its being obscene and pornographic?

I’d ask God to help us but I’d like to think that Sunday is still his day of rest.

www.akkuza.com – expensive thoughts for a Sunday afternoon.

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Articles

J'accuse : Hermes' New Clothes

Hermes the classical Greek God − and not the modern sartorial homonym − had “messenger of the Gods” as his main job description. Clad in nowt but his birthday suit, and often depicted with wingèd limbs, his main business was supposed to be that of the transmission of information among the deities busy playing with the dice of fate and generally fornicating with the more pleasurable parts of the populace. With that in mind, and probably for reasons of expedience, the classics also made Hermes patron of such things as orators and wit, weights and measures, literature and sport and invention, as well as business in general. Think Austin Gatt but sexy when naked.

It would seem that the Olympic deities would share portfolios much like a latter-day Gonzi Cabinet − surely it was less of an attempt at saving the citizens millions of obols and more of a ploy by the priests and sibyls to garner a larger part of the worshipping business. Plus ça change. But back to Hermes, that god of communication and boundaries (and the travellers crossing them). Were we to revive the pagan practice of worshiping patron gods for every nuance in our lives, a rejuvenated Hermes would find that he has a much more challenging job cut out for him.

Proximity

The relationship between geographical distance and information has, over the past few years, been sufficiently twisted as to defy the previously simple laws of physics. Take your average battle in, say, 490 BC. Marathon − the place not the race − and the Persians have just been soundly beaten (or if you believe Herodotus and not Fantozzi then the Persians are about to be engaged) so someone needs to carry some information to someone else (again either “We Won” or “Help”). Enter Pheidippides who volunteers for the run. He goes on foot. It takes him some time and he runs naked.

Take your modern day pitched battle. Say an FA Cup match between deadly rivals Man U and Liverpool. We watch it live in HD in our sitting room. Meanwhile, a pretty miffed multimillionaire player (fully clothed) tweets at the end of the match about how referee Webb might as well have worn a Man U outfit. Thousands read Babel’s (oh so apt) missive and the player is duly fined the next day for having stepped beyond the line of the “player – referee” respectful relationship. All in a matter of minutes.

It’s weird and difficult for our generation to get accustomed to. We who grew up with geography lessons about wheat in Saskatchewan, coffee in Brazil and tea in Ceylon can barely keep up with the information overload at the tips of our fingers. The twisted physics (and geography) is such that the story of floods in Brisbane creates more affinity (what I choose to call a feeling of involvement) than that of the tumult in Tunisia. Sure, the press are to blame (or to shoulder some form of responsibility) − for if they filter the news accordingly then those of us who still depend on local mouthpieces (and by local I mean national) will never hear of General Lebled’s plight in the prisons of Sfax.

Relevance

So are we more deeply moved by the story of Christina Taylor Green, born on 11/9/01 and died in Arizona than by the deaths of civilians in the Tunisian riots? Why does the English speaking press give the Brisbane floods more coverage than those in Rio? Here’s a fact: 537 people are reported dead in Rio de Janeiro and 12,000 made homeless. Australia’s floods killed 16 people. In the weird domino of affinity and relevance you might notice that English-speaking media (and this includes new media) covered the Australian floods much more extensively than the Rio disaster.

Should we be surprised that the Maltese press found more to say about families of “Gozo extraction” (is that like a mine or something?) leaving Brisbane than about the hundreds of Cariocas losing their lives? What does surprise me is the lack of information about the Maltese caught up in the crossfire at Tunisia. Malta made it to the international news thanks to speculation that the defecting President Ben Ali might choose our shores (he preferred Dubai in the end), otherwise our proximity to the land of Carthage counted for nowt insofar as we were concerned. What to make of that?

ber4j_110116

Content

There are benefits to this whole business of the new era of information. Gradually, society will develop new filters in which relevance is determined in different ways. It might be anybody’s guess whether the manipulators of information get their hands on those filters first. In any case the openness of the Internet that had hitherto been spreading can only be a boon. I say hitherto because challenges to this form of freedom of expression are evident in all quarters. Whether you like or hate Assange, the latest attacks on his site and supporters are signs of a new pitched battle between the former forces of media control (in the name of the general good) and the new media’s seemingly uncontainable spread.

We are faced with a challenge of working hard on our own personal filters. Armed with i-gadgets bringing us first hand tweets, links and news, we can choose to be passive or active. Hermes’ New Clothes are shiny and can be deceptive. Politicians are still learning to communicate beyond their normal reach (and to deal with the unexpected consequences). Sarah Palin’s double-whammy, thanks to her ill-advised crosshair gaffe, should be a lesson to anybody attempting to abuse the power of communication by stirring up hatred instead of informed dissent.

We can sit back and compare the truths behind Tunisian unrest and protest and Joseph Muscat’s Friday parade in Valletta. On the one hand we had a people against an oppressive regime that went beyond arrogance and lack of respect for rights. On the other hand we are witnessing the fabrication of an opportunistic Opposition that is playing with the toy of public displeasure at current economic downsides without stopping to concretely propose a new way ahead.

Fashions

What will we fashion out of the information available? Muscat mentioned investing in competitiveness. Behind the empty campaigning lies an awful truth: competitiveness is the key to Malta’s future. However, competitiveness can only be sown in a field of merit, accountability and open information. It is not Joseph’s half-baked litany of buzzwords that is needed to give some hope to this country. It is a new generation of non-PLPN politicians who can see beyond the old style propaganda and crowd stirring rhetoric.

Maybe it’s not just Hermes who needs new clothes.

www.akkuza.com invites you to see the video of Tunisia’s freedom rapper General Lebled… Et In Cartago Ego.

Categories
Politics

Via Salaria

In ancient Rome the Via Salaria linked the Eternal City to the port of Castrum Truentinum, now known as the Port of Ascoli. It was called Salaria because it was the road used by the Sabines to retrieve the precious salt from the mouth of the Tiber. Salt was one of the primary units of payment in ancient Rome – hence the term “salary” from “salarium”.

In modern Malta our parliamentarians do not arrogate themselves a new salary but rather opt to increase their “honorarium”. I doubt whether we have a Via Honoraria running from the new parliament square to the respective centres of the PLPN MPs. In the meantime MPs from both sides perpetuate the pathetic fallacy of “not accepting” the honorarium while insisting on distributing its proceeds according to their wills (if something is not accepted then it is not yours to distribute).

The PN government is now under siege and has resorted to the equivalent of hunting for the mice in the sewers in order to survive. The sudden hike price of commodities from fuel to gas to milk can only serve to exacerbate the unpopularity of a government that seems to have lost the feel of the people’s pulse. Joseph’s Labour might be poised to take advantage of the situation by promising the usual progressive package that protects the weak. The problem lies in the fact that the current economic conditions will not discriminate between conservative intervention or socialist laxity.

Just look at what happened in the UK yesterday. The LibDems and the Tories were both vociferously against any VAT hike while they laboured in opposition. They completed their U-turn yesterday with the announced increase of VAT to 20%. The only saving grace was the fact that essential products (the most cited were bread and nappies) are zero-rated and hence not affected.

So are we to grin and bear the hikes while our salaries plateau over the next few years or are we all to run for parliament in the hope to get a piece of the very special pie that seems to be reserved at the top?