Some things DID go down on January 1

In our headline about price increases of January 10 (graphic, left), we said that 'nothing came down'. We admit to being wrong: making people redundant is now cheaper: down, too, is our purchasing power. If products and basic services increased from the very start of 2013, usually by quite a lot more than pension or minimum wages, purchasing power in Spain has declined considerably, to which the Government responds by increasing direct and indirect taxes, lowering or freezing public service employees' salaries and a timid, if not plainly ridiculous, upping of the minimum wage by just one-sixth of a percentage point, as well as a 1% for pensions over €1,000 monthly and a measly 2% for those below. It might be noted that Spain's Consumer Price Index (IPC in its Spanish acronym) went up by 2.9% last year.