Money cannot fix everything, sometimes you need real solutions

We have just been regaled with a budget which promises to fix everything that is wrong in the country with the usual habit of throwing money at the problem. 

Low fertility rate? Give parents money to have more children. 

Too many cars? Pay under 30s to relinquish their licence. 

Obesity rates? Give youngsters six months free gym membership. 

Not enough students in further education? Increase their stipends. 

Property prices out of control? Offer more aid to young buyers. 

Now you might think, what’s wrong with all these measures? In themselves, I agree, they are commendable, but if you analyse them they are not really solving anything, they are simply putting a large band aid on a festering wound. That wound is our quality of life. To use a timeworn cliché, money cannot buy happiness. 

If one wants to really dissect this budget, it is actually an admission that Malta has become so exorbitantly expensive that without the government’s help, most people cannot afford their own home, or go to university, or get physically fit, or be able to get to work on time or even to bring children into the world. I’m all for a just society which gives equal opportunities to all, and a welfare state which helps the less privileged, but the way things stand, financial hand outs are now needed by everyone, including the middle class, simply in order to afford the basics. 

And how is this administration paying for all this largesse? The mind boggles at the thought of how much the country’s debt has grown. 

Let’s take buying a home, which as Maltese we always took very much for granted: Traditionally, couples would go steady for a few years, when it got serious they would start looking around for a place to purchase (which technically meant they were engaged) and then they would set the wedding date. 

Today, unless one has parents who were wise enough to invest in the property market, or else you were fortunate enough to have inherited something, the average 30-something simply cannot get on the property ladder. The first time buyer scheme has helped, but it can in no way compensate for the over-inflated prices we are seeing which are a result of the construction boom. Contrary to everywhere else where a glut of property means prices go down, here they keep getting higher and higher with no end in sight. According to national statistics, property prices have increased by over 10 times since 1980. 

Foreign investment and the lucrative rental market have certainly had a hand in driving up prices and, of course, it is a free market based on supply and demand. But when locals cannot afford to buy property in their own country, then something is seriously wrong. When you have so many Maltese going to Sicily to buy something affordable (and with acres of land to boot) it starts to feel like we are being driven out of our own homes. 

Even if a couple with their combined income manages to scrap together enough money to put down a deposit and pay for all the additional fees, buying a home soon becomes a millstone around their neck. Neither can afford to leave their job because of the mortgage… which brings us to the second national problem. The declining birth rate. Again, throwing money at this issue is not enough. We were told that the first child bonus will now be €1,000, for a second child €1,500 and for a third child or more €2,000. Tax bands will also favour those with two or more children. But is that enough for couples to have more babies? 

Children don’t need parents who bring them into this world just to get a grant or a favourable tax rate—they need parents who have the time and the real desire to bring them into the world and raise them. The children have to be born into a family where they are truly wanted, otherwise we are just birthing more social problems. It’s useless having families with 10 children as used to happen in the past, only for the mother to be so worn out and exhausted that by the 5th, 6th, 7th kid, the children are practically raising themselves (or, more likely) the oldest girls are doing the ‘mothering’ role. The father was mostly absent because someone had to be out there in the workplace, providing food for all those mouths to feed. Ask adults who come from huge families whether their parents had time to pay enough attention to all of them or whether instead, they felt overlooked and perhaps even neglected. We can paint rosy, nostalgic pictures of the past as much as we like, but everything in life is relative. 

When it comes to tackling the traffic issue, no one has yet taken the bull by the horns, so asking people to relinquish their licence against a one off payment will hardly make a dent. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana recently said that both parties need to agree with implementing measures to discourage car use before introducing a mass transport system, and on this I agree with him. There are certain national issues which need to steer away from finger-pointing or one-upmanship and this is one of them. If both the PL and PN become unpopular for making it more expensive to run a car then you can rest assured that (after they are finished cursing) drivers will find a way to cut down on using their private car every day. As things are at the moment, there is absolutely nothing to dissuade people from using their own car (except for the traffic and lack of parking which, frankly, are enough for me). 

What are needed are actual measures such as paid parking, just to mention one possibility. Transport Minister Chris Bonett is not in agreement, describing any punitive measures as a new tax. Well, yes, so be it. The country is in daily gridlock, and only shock tactics and drastic measures will ever disentangle us from the snarling traffic jams. 

Getting out of our cars and walking more when it’s only a short distance certainly cannot hurt, and can have the added benefit of addressing the obesity problem. It will certainly go further than a temporary free membership because what we need are not stop gap freebies but a long-term plan to get us off our sofas and to move more. Despite having a PM and an Opposition leader who are both into fitness, the nation as a whole is still very lazy (many would park their car in their front room if they could). 

What is needed is a cultural shift which can in turn have a domino effect on so much of our lives—less traffic, cleaner air, healthier bodies and better mental health. And these are things which don’t need a lot of cash thrown at them—in fact a better quality of life is literally at our fingertips for the taking. 

Our politicians will not admit to this, so it is us who have to realise that it cannot always be about keeping the economic wheel turning. To use another cliché, the best things in life really are free.