This is one of those times when officials are simply astonishing. So much so that you just sit there with your mouth hanging open. ⠀ Here’s a basic question any schoolkid could answer: are prices in Russia going up or down? Obviously, they’re going up—everyone goes grocery shopping. ⠀ But actually, no. They’re going down, our dear Russian government tells us. It’s even planning to lower the subsistence minimum. ⠀ They calculated that if you add up the cost of all the goods and services a person needs to live, it comes to 11,012 rubles (about $120; what’s astonishing in itself is how they even arrived at that figure). ⠀ But prices are falling, life is getting better and cheaper, so the subsistence minimum should be reduced to 10,609 rubles (about $115). ⠀ Remember how they said it in the film *Kin-dza-dza!* (a famous Soviet sci-fi satire): “The government lives on another planet, my dear.”