If things feel hard right now, it’s because they are. Real wages, that’s wages after they’ve been adjusted for inflation,

are officially back to the levels they were in 2011, 14 years ago. And that’s only 10% higher than they were back in 1992. But if you believe the Labour Party spin, they’re doing a wonderful job. In August, Treasurer Jim Chalmers claimed the strongest real wages growth in 5 years. And with the latest figures being released, Labour have come out claiming that real wages have been growing for eight straight quarters. That’s 2 years for us normal people. And whilst that is technically true according to the ABS, it conceals a lie. And this lie is the reason why it’s so hard for you and I to make ends meet right now. The lies, as always, are concealed in the details behind the headlines and the press release puff pieces. And to their credit, some people in the media are actually doing a better than usual job of calling this one out. But in this video, I’m going to put some different pieces together so that you can understand exactly how this lie works and how to destroy it.

But before we get to those details, my name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project, and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap that we get fed by politicians and to make sense of the nonsense in the media to help us keep up with the world as it changes around us. I am 100% viewer supported. So, if you appreciate what I’m doing here at the Topher project, then please support my work by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos, then you will love my books about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience. There’s my first book, Good People Break Bad Laws. There’s my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws, which is all about the theology of civil disobedience. Then there’s my DVD documentary, Battleground Melbourne. And I have t-shirts and hoodies in a range of designs. And yes, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Five of my t-shirt designs are being discontinued at the end of November. So, grab these shirts and hoodies while stocks last. And grab a DVD and a book or two while you’re there at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com and everything that you buy will help me to keep the Topher project going.

All right, let’s dive into these lies at the heart of the government’s claims because this contrast between the government crowing about real wages growth and our lived reality that it is harder than ever to make ends meet. This contrast matters. This is a lie that needs to be exposed. So, let’s get down to it. The Albanese government says correctly, according to the official figures, that real wages growth in the September quarter was 0.2%. Now, what that means in layman’s terms is that wages grew faster than the official inflation rate by 0.2% over the 3 months from July to September.

Now, of course, the first point I’m going to make, and many of you will have seen this one coming, is that official inflation is far lower than real inflation. Official inflation is 3.2% right now, but the official CPI or consumer price index figure is a manipulated figure. The expression, if you torture your statistics for long enough, they will confess to anything, applies. The CPI is really whatever the government of the day wants it to be, and they want it to be half or less of what real inflation is for reasons that I’ve covered in other videos. The fact is that rent is up by far more than inflation. Electricity is up by far more than inflation, nearly 25% in just the last 12 months. Most importantly, the cost of government is up by far more than the rate of inflation. And these are things that the official CPI figures do not properly take into account.

So, that’s the first point to keep in mind when they talk about real wages growth. They’re talking about wages rising faster than the highly manipulated official CPI figures, which is meaningless because real inflation is much higher than that. But for the rest of this video, well until right at the end when I’ll come back to it. But I’m actually going to put that aside because there’s a deeper lie here that we need to recognize.

Putting aside that whole inflation thing, the official inflation figure is 3.2% and the official wage growth was 0.2% higher than that in the last quarter,

leading to the claim that real wages grew. Here’s the detail that explodes this myth. There is a big difference between the rate of growth in the private sector. That’s people with real jobs who do things that are actually productive and necessary in the free market versus the rate of wage growth among government employees. According to the always excellent Leith Van Onselen and writing for macro business, private sector wage growth was 3.2% whilst public sector wage growth was 3.8%. Which means if private sector wage growth was 3.2% and the official inflation figure was 3.2%. Then the private sector experienced no wage growth at all.

And this is yet another reason why the Albanese government is so keen to grow the public sector so fast because this is a lever that they can use to game the numbers. Creating worthless government jobs lowers unemployment, giving them generous pay rises, increases real wage growth. It’s essentially the same thing that they’re doing with immigration, bringing in lots of new people to gain the GDP. So that we’re in a per person recession. The experience that you and I are having is a recession experience, but the numbers look good on paper because they’re adding people in to grow the GDP.

The principle at play in all of these manipulated statistics is a thing known as good art’s law, which says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Things like the GDP, real wages, growth, inflation, these are figures that are useful metrics. They’re important to keep an eye on because they tell us things about how the economy is going and growing. except that the government has now made all of those things into targets. There is a target inflation range targets for GDP growth and of course they want real wages to be growing at least on paper so that they can release press releases like this one. The metrics became targets and as a result they’ve become useless as metrics because they no longer tell us the truth. They tell us the government approved lies and they create incentives for governments to do manipulative things like grow the public sector and increase the rate of their wage growth so that they can tell these lies.

Now, I do want to come back to my earlier point about real inflation being far higher than the official CPI figure. I would argue that real inflation is at least double the official highly manipulated CPI figure. And if I’m right about that, then this real wages graph goes downhill, pun fully intended, and our real wages are down at two aren’t just down at 2011 levels. If I’m right, then we’re down at 1980s levels and falling because real inflation, not the manipulated CPI, is outpacing wage and income growth by a wide margin. and ask yourself, doesn’t that feel closer to the truth? Everyone’s circumstances are different, of course, and I don’t presume to know what’s going on for you, but people on fixed incomes are struggling right now. And there’s a lot of people who have had pay rises or increased their business income or in one way or another, they’ve increased their revenue into their family home. And yet, despite having more money than ever before, they’re still struggling.

That’s not your imagination. You’re not going crazy. You’re simply being lied to. The metrics became targets. Those targets became manipulated. And now these press releases are filled with manipulative lies designed to hide the truth and confuse you instead of being filled with useful metrics that reveal truths designed to eliminate.

So, what do we do about it? Well, there’s nothing we can do about politicians lying, unfortunately.

But we can arm ourselves with the truth, which is what this video has hopefully helped to do. But at a personal level, can I urge you to think seriously about how you can increase your income? Side hustles, home businesses, maybe switching companies, or demanding a pay rise, and actually being willing to leave if you don’t get one. All of those tactics need to be on the table because I’m sorry to tell you, this situation isn’t going to fix itself anytime soon based on the current evidence that I’m seeing. I think we have at least five more years, probably longer, before the pain becomes so sharp that the Australian people will actually be willing to start voting differently, to change the political incentives to actually reward politicians who tell us the truth instead of what we do right now, which is we reward politicians who tell us lies.

None of us can change the world. None of us can even change Australia on our own. So, I guess what I’m saying is don’t waste energy on a futile quest to save others from themselves. Can I just encourage you instead to focus on you and the people that you love and doing what’s necessary for you and for your loved ones to survive and to thrive despite the lies, the inflation, the economic madness that is going on around us. Because actually, if you think about it, if enough of us do that, do what we can do to improve the situation for ourselves and the people that we love, if enough of us do that, well, that then becomes the very movement that can potentially save Australia.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project, and this is what I do. I help busy people like you to cut through the crap and make sense of the nonsense, and most importantly, to have clarity about what’s really going on in the world and what you should do about it. Now, if you appreciate what I’m doing with the Topher project, then please help me to keep going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos and you will love my books about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience, which you’ll find at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com, along with my DVDs and my t-shirts and hoodies in a range of designs, including these five designs, which are being discontinued at the end of November. So, head over to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com and grab your favorites while stocks last.

Thank you so much for watching all the way to the end. Please like, comment what you think of these official inflation figures and how the Australian economy is really going. Make sure you subscribe to my channel. It really does help.

And as always, think free.