My grandmother ran a bakery in Valletta for 41 years. In that time she changed the price of a loaf of bread four times, and I remember each one, because she talked about it for weeks beforehand.
The bakery is still there. Under its current owners the price has changed four times since 2022. Nobody talks about it. The sign is simply different one morning.
Economists call this the de-anchoring of expectations. My grandmother would have called it something else. She believed that a price was a kind of promise, and that breaking it was a small shame to be carried, not a line item to be adjusted.
Ines Farrugia is a contributing writer for The Continental Times Opinion section.