Was it a coincidence, or was there any link between my statistics-ridden article last week and the Prime Minister and his counterpart breaking out in a rash of conflicting statistics at their Sunday meetings? Or is it just my imagination?

Now when opposite sides start throwing statistics at each other, one can rest assured that one of them, or both, are using those statistics incorrectly: there is no way that two sets of figures can both be right at the same time. One of them, or both, are using statistics in a very partial way in order to undermine or twist the real picture so that it fits the speaker’s preconceived position.

Anyway, I am not going to bore readers with more figures, or confuse them even more by trying to ferret out the real figures from the false. Someone must do it one day, so that people do not remain as they are now – exposed to two versions of everything, which the mainline media present as two faces of the same truth, as if an untruth could be the other side of the truth.

We live in the shadow of Greece: the entire EU this week was in crisis because the effect of the Greek problem spilled over to the entire eurozone and the mighty euro itself slid in international comparison as a result of concerns that the 10-year-old currency had huge structural gaps in its DNA.

And had not there been a last-minute agreement between France and Germany, we could have seen a very ominous split between the two fundamental states in the Union. It is still too early to see whether the split has been papered over or mended.

But on a much less pan-European level and a more meaningful one – the one relating to this country, this economy, this people – there are lessons galore to be learned from the Greek crisis. Our politicians, the Opposition especially, seem to refuse to listen to the lessons coming from Greece, which is rather sad, seeing that it is the Socialist government of Greece that has been left to handle the almighty mess left by its centre-right predecessor.

No country can live forever beyond its means. No country, not even a small one such as ours, can demand it be bailed out of the mess it has created for itself. No one owes us a living.

At the same time, it is true that the oil shock has had a greater impact on Maltese families and businesses than it has had in other countries. That may well be because oil products prices have been hiked by much more here than was the case in other economies which, however, started with higher prices over the past few years. It may also be because of the still persistent myth that it is the government that sets the prices and so the government can equally keep them down. It cannot be because we use more oil products than they do abroad: on the contrary, we use far less – we do not have multiple hours of commuting to work, our winters are mild and our industry runs on electricity, but then so do the industries of them all.

We have seen our public deficit explode, our debt mounting and mounting again, and after having made it to the euro by the skin of our teeth, we have slipped up on our commitments to the Maastricht criteria so we began facing punitive action by the European Commission. Greece, and Portugal, and the rest of the PIIGS, lie along this road – at some distance, but along this same road. All we have to do to get there is to allow the situation to deteriorate and, bang!, we’re there. Keeping our Fitch, and our Moody’s, and the other rating agencies’ credit ratings is absolutely central. Letting them slip, as happened to Greece some time ago, and to Portugal last week, would not just mean international loss of face but, more importantly, seeing our international borrowing cost that much more.

It is so easy to tumble down the Greek slippery slope: a complacent government, a government and an Opposition competing over who can give out the most benefits at election time, tax revenues allowed to decline without real efforts to get them in, widespread tax and social assistance fraud, in the case of Greece (but not Greece alone) costly public works (in the case of Greece, all those costly sporting venues for the Olympics that were left to rot afterwards). There is a moral somewhere for us here.

Which brings us to the issue of wages. It is true that Malta had the lowest rise in the minimum wage in all Europe. This paper has carried this news many times over in past months, so it’s not news at all. But do you know which other country had an almost flat rate of unit labour costs from 2000 to 2008? Germany. None other. That was how Germany kept its competitive advantage, how it continued to strengthen its exports even in the midst of the world’s worst recession in decades. While Greece was seeing a 10 per cent fall in its trade balances for goods and services, Germany was seeing a six per cent increase. That explains why Germans were so reluctant to bail out profligate Greece, why they facetiously suggested that Greece sells them some of its islands. While countries such as Greece (and Spain, and Italy, etc.) were awarding themselves wage increases for which they hadn’t worked, the Germans remained working flat out for more or less the same wages. What increases they got for themselves, they got through increased productivity, through value-added manufacturing, through keeping their prices down. Germany is the China of Europe, with better technology and more advanced products.

While last week we had more public wringing of hands about more people at the risk of poverty, more people unable to cope with the cost of living, with oil prices, etc., we also had other international comparisons regarding Malta.

In a very interesting and detailed report on Malta’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis), American consultants Angelou Economics (poignantly for them, their leader hails from Greece) gave us some other not-so-glorious Malta figures (there is a report in this issue about the exercise as a whole).

Such as:

• Compared to the EU’s 27 average, Malta has the lowest Upper Secondary Education completion rate (2008: 24 per cent females, 30.9 per cent males – compared to 87.7 per cent females and 94.1 per cent males in the Czech Republic. But then Malta has a 6.7 per cent higher rate than that of the EU 27 average regarding the growth in completion of Upper Secondary education since 2000, and Malta has a higher percentage of its population with tertiary degrees (22.5 per cent, compared to 15.5 per cent for the Czech Republic and 21.4 per cent for Portugal).

• Malta’s median income is 35 per cent below that of the EU 27 average (€9,547 against €14,625) but this could also be perceived to be Malta’s competitive advantage. Malta’s lower wages are an attractive incentive for the competitive operation of existing industries, as well as for the recruitment of new employers. Moreover, Malta has been able to stabilise its competitive position, as it has kept the growth of median income since 2005 to only 17.1 per cent.

• At 35.1 per cent, Malta’s GDP growth in the 2000-2008 timeframe is very near to the EU 27 average (35.9 per cent) but anaemic compared to the Czech Republic’s 140.5 per cent, Luxembourg’s 78.8 per cent, Ireland’s 73.4 per cent and Singapore’s 66.6 per cent.

• At 63.8 per cent, Malta’s government debt as a percentage of GDP is slightly above the EU 27 average (61.5 per cent) but far higher than Luxembourg’s 13.5 per cent, Ireland’s 44.1 per cent but not Singapore’s 95.9 per cent. Every citizen in Malta owed €7,712 in government debt in 2003 and €8,868 in 2008 (Singapore €27,736 in 2008, Ireland €18,217).

• While Malta’s annual unemployment rate was 7.2 per cent in December 2009, lower than the EU 27 average of 9.6 per cent, Malta still has by far the lowest labour force participation in the EU (54.2 per cent in 2003, 55.3 per cent in 2008: compared to 70.90 per cent in 2008 in Cyprus and 68.2 per cent in Portugal.

I said I would not bore readers with figures, and here am I doing precisely that. My question is quite simple: how can anyone expect wages to grow out of such a low labour participation? That’s without considering other issues such as the high vs low value-added of what we produce, or our higher than normal government sector (yet another ‘Greek’ trait), or the quite widespread extent of services and manufacturing geared to this small market.

It is good to have a social conscience and it would be wonderful if we could raise our standard of living to European standards, but before we do that – or rather, in order to do that – we have to eliminate the above-mentioned factors that are still shackling us.

An Opposition is a government-in-waiting, which is one specific reason why it should not try to ride the tiger of populism – because the tiger will inevitably turn back and devour it.

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