Sometimes deciphering reality, and even predicting the future from data on key economic indicators, the latter of which is centered on GDP, is like looking at the world through the eyes of someone who has a hammer in his hand and sees everything as a nail.
There are other parameters that tell more about the future of a nation than just the economic statistics that governments are accustomed to "boast" about. According to Jacques Attali, there are three parameters that should be studied when trying to understand where a nation is going, and they are demography, food, and music.
1. An aging population!
Although Albania is not the oldest country in Europe today, it is aging extremely rapidly. One indicator of this phenomenon is the percentage of the population over 65. In Europe, it took an average of 26 years for this ratio to increase from 15% to 20%; in the United States it took more than 50 years.
In Albania, demographic data shows that people over 65, from 5.5% in 1990, today account for about 16% of the total population. Meanwhile, it is predicted that the population over the age of 65 and older will reach 26.4% in 2050.
Beyond the high fiscal costs of rapidly aging populations, which are one side of the problem, it will lead to a less dynamic economy, with every 10 percent increase in the population over age 65 reducing GDP per capita by about 5.5 percent. One-third of this reduction comes from slower employment growth; two-thirds from slowing labor productivity.
2. Expensive food and the appetite that comes from hunger!
Although the government seems very proud and declares that salaries have increased much faster than prices, as in the statistical example, only MPs and ministers have.
According to Eurostat data, food prices in Albania are 1% more expensive than the European Union average, while incomes are 41% of the EU average.
This gap in the increase in food prices and per capita income does not allow 50% of Albanians to fulfill more than what another Frenchman, Alexandre Dumas, in his book "The Dictionary of Cuisine" called "The appetite that comes from hunger". This type of appetite is without pretensions, it does not make a fuss, it is satisfied with a food that fills it.
3. No good news from music either!
Music tells everything about the creativity of a nation: its joy for life, its revolt, the relationships between people. It also has the unique ability to ignite the imagination of the rest of the world about the place where it was created.
Therefore, music is not simply a reflection of culture, but also a harbinger of change, a preliminary abstraction of the shape of things to come.
Even in this parameter, it seems that we have no chance for development. We are a nation where the average person watches television for about 5.5 hours a day, does not read books, and rarely goes to the theater or concerts.
In the public eye, the artist is just an object. Success in music is not determined by the quality of the music the artist performs, but by the rounded breasts, the plump lips, the white facets on the teeth, the clothing, even the songs that are offered have lyrics with only 10 words and the tallava music.
Attali does not believe in the future of nations like Albania with an aging population and/or overly expensive food and/or with poor music that is only heard in their own land and not by other nations. But he is French and writes for "The Economy of Life".
While in Albania, the "Economy of Maintaining Power" is offered, trying to make Albanians believe in mathematical tricks. It is enough to express Albania's GDP in euros and they can boast that it has increased 3 times. If they expressed it in Turkish lira, the future would look 14 times better!
Editorial
