Labour wants us to believe these are the best of times. It wants us to ignore the challenges of our lives. It wants us to consent in the panglossian myth that things could not be better.

There is no doubt that some aspects of our economy are bubbling along nicely. If you measure your country’s wealth in bricks and mortar, then the manic construction of apartment blocks around every corner is the evidence you need to comfort your economic analysis.

But we need to look beneath that dusty surface.

A shift in the fundamental economic realities of this country is occurring now that reverses 60 years of welfare improvements for our community and re-opens the economic inequality gaps to extents we have not seen since before the war.

The prosperity of the Maltese family since the 1950s was built around the family home. Having a roof over your head and the security of being able to continue to afford that roof no matter the inevitable ups and downs of a family’s situation is central to the stability we all seek, no matter our background.

But as demand for rented property from expats or even invisible beneficiaries of our citizenship sales schemes increases, more of those family homes are being sold to an ever more concentrated ownership of developers who build to rent or sell at prices manifestly unaffordable for local salaries.

A new landed gentry is created for whom these are truly the best of times.

And a new generation of dispossessed families without a realistic prospect of acquiring property to live in is also created for whom the struggle to make ends meet becomes tougher than ever.

As the one per cent grow richer, the materialistic ethos of a soulless Labour Party and its greedy elites flourishes at the expense of the remaining 99

Renting a decent property has, in a matter of a few heady years, come to cost near the average monthly salary. When half the income of a household is taken up by rent, the pressures to make ends meet becomes very high. And for those stuck as tenants the uncertainty of the rental price next year prevents them from planning and making long-term financial commitments, particularly breaking free from the rental cycle through a mortgage.

A greater concentration of ownership, combined with increased pressure of demand, are indications that things will get rougher when today’s teenagers settle down. In a society where the pursuit of material wealth is both desirable as an end in itself and necessary simply to keep up with the pressures of existing, we are preparing for our children a country with an economy that is harder for them to live and survive in than the one we grew up in.

We are creating paradoxes of classical inequalities. As more property is developed around us, it becomes harder for many of our children to afford to live in any of it. As we live longer and healthier lives, our retirees are cashing out on their own homes in order to afford their retirement instead of keeping that wealth within the family to give their children a head start. As the economy generates wealth from the money spent by expats, the social fabric of family solidarity thins out and life is tougher for thousands of families who see their expenses increase at a far faster pace than their incomes.

Old, long-forgotten exclusions are re-emerging: families that can’t afford their housing; pensioners who can’t afford a decent retirement; workers whose education and skill-set prevent them from sharing in incomes reserved for expats.

A collective illusion that these are the best of times creates the short-term gratification of living beyond one’s means: of measuring one’s state in life by their phone, and their car, and their holiday. In a materialistic world measured by objects that can be photographed and Facebooked, less importance is given to the complete richness of one’s existence: culture, a holistic and lifetime education, family and solidarity. It is the best time for things; not for people.

Joseph Muscat wants these realities to be ignored. He wants us to collaborate in a collective myopia because as the one per cent grow richer, the materialistic ethos of a soulless Labour Party and its greedy elites flourishes at the expense of the remaining 99.

In the meantime, we are thrown perio­dic opiates such as statistical manipulations that redefine poverty and unemployment to subsume them into cate­go­ri­sations that gloss over the very real hardship people experience.

The PN holds the importance of private commercial initiative as central to the success of our country. We have been the party that over the past 60 years created the level playing field for an open private sector driven economy. But we have also been the party for whom profit is not a god, but a means to an improved life for all members of the community, without exception.

The PN is the party that seeks out inequalities in order to reduce them. We are the party that seeks to manage an economy in which today’s profits are secondary to the opportunities being crea­ted for tomorrow’s families.

Labour accuses us of being ‘negative’ for revealing what it seeks to hide. That is our job. The first step to addressing the real challenges of our country is accepting that they are there. The people for whom their monthly pay day looks further and further away understand that some things are not quite right with our economy.

Our job will be to tell them why it does not have to be that way.

Adrian Delia is contesting the election to become leader of the Nationalist Party.