Budgeting....Gangnam Style...

Somewhere between the announcement that Larry Howai was brought on board to introduce deficit reducing austerity measures and the pre-collapse of the government over the Section 34 fiasco something changed, and the budget that was supposed to tighten our belts did anything but. Long on distraction but woefully short on any real developmental substance, the government did what governments under serious political pressure usually do, and that is pander to the most and distract the rest which, for these purposes, includes populous measures such as the removal of value added tax from food and, as a punishment for doing well, a removal of the gas subsidy from premium gas. Personally, I have no problem with either measure as it's what a learned friend of mine referred to as 'left pocket giving to right pocket economics.' Getting the middle class to pay at the pump for the savings afforded to the poor at the supermarket checkout was a master stroke of deceit and I applaud this government for staying true to form. Hidden in this shell game was the continued and massive cost to the taxpayers for rescuing two failed financial institutions while no measure has been put in place to either recover what was stolen or to bring charges against the looters in the first place. That this is a country that punishes the small but rewards the big was again underscored, and while significant measures have been budgeted to keep Laventillians from killing each other, nothing was done (again) about 'white collar' criminals, not the creation of special courts nor the deepening of oversight, not even the deployment of joint police and army patrols in board rooms and state rooms to protect the public from the devious and the determined, crime in this country will continue to remain in the realm of the poor for as long as political power remains the remit of the rich.

The government's idea of stimulating growth involves the 'manufacture' a boom out of thin air by spending money it does not have to build things we do not need, creating temporary jobs and further burdening the state with an increasingly unskilled workforce. Using the same formula that created the American housing bubble (and while Larry did not say this directly it was obviously implied), at some point a miracle will occur that will close the gap between income and expenditure. The Ministry of Local Government will be 'given' four new buildings because obviously that and not the lack of legislation that reforms local government is what is keeping it from performing as it ought to. Despite knowing that the housing shortfall is upward of ten thousand units, the government is going to facilitate the building of one hundred new houses per year utilizing the National Self Help Commission, but who gets this help and where these houses will be built is still a mystery. Instead of being used as a fulcrum to drive the financial sector and set the pace for the delivery of services, First Citizens Bank will instead be sold off through the stock exchange.

With an objective to increase the non-energy share of GDP to 66.0 per cent over the next five years, and while they have have 'identified' a number of areas for growth and investment (such as financial services, tourism, information and communication technology, downstream energy industries, agriculture, creative arts and the maritime sectors) again nothing of substance was outlined to make believers out of us.

GATE will be re-tooled to provide more hairdressers and mechanics, leaving the entrepreneur-ially ambitious to  rightly fend for themselves. Small and micro enterprise development was mentioned in passing using double speak gobbeldy gook that said nothing, demonstrating the lack of any real vision for the development of the people beyond the minimum wage earning stage.

The greatest trick that budgets play is that this money being dispensed from that magical pinata called the treasury does not rightfully belong to the people in the first place, so, not knowing what they're entitled to the people continue to accept whatever they get with gratitude. Perhaps that is the chief reason for keeping them under-educated and off balanced in the first place.