A Letter to the Minister of Finance... (On the Budget 2013 - 2014)

Dear Honorable Minister of Finance, every year around this time I am minded to write the same letter that I am now writing to you, the same one that I have written to your three predecessors who, despite all claiming to have ownership of the idea, have not seen it fit to implement it to date.

Perhaps you might be tempted to.

Mister Minister I have proposed time and again that the solution to much of what ails our nation is the breakdown of the family and the destruction of the community due to many factors but driven in the main by the vast majority of our people being unable to own a home. As a former banker I am sure that you are only too aware of this situation, but I wonder, have you been able to view these drivers from all sides?

It is a widely known fact that in countries where home ownership outnumbers house renters, the negatives in society such as crime and anti-social behavior are sharply reduced. In these countries communities thrive, neighborhoods glisten and the people live secure with their families and their neighbors. Drug blocks and gang dens cannot spring up, and if they do they do not last because the home owners will neither accept nor tolerate it in their communities. Sadly in our country the opposite occurs, and we are ending up with a large peasant class beholding to landlords for their living space.  As it stands the people of this nation are disenfranchised due to the sheer impossibility of the average person to own a home, and because of this families break, neighborhoods collapse and the society as a whole fails to thrive. Where vibrant communities made up of generations that have grown together over the years should be standing we have ended up with ghettos and squatter communities, broken families and children with no understanding of their rich history or their culture.

Mr. Minister, few organizations have the ability to effect dramatic social re-engineering like your Ministry can, and the instrument of the budget to lead reform through purposeful legislation and taxation is a central pillar of a functional capitalist democracy as you are no doubt well aware. They say that some men are born great while others have greatness thrust upon them, but regardless of how you come to find yourself where you are at this moment in history, I implore you to seize the opportunity to make this blessed nation all that it was meant to be for all of its citizens.

Mister Minister, if it becomes our intention to make it easier for our people to own homes, I would like to suggest that we take steps to put credit within reach of the average person. For 'first time' home purchases up to one million dollars we should abolish the stamp duty and, utilizing the resources of the Home Mortgage Bank, First Citizens and the Unit Trust, offer 'simple' zero deposit, zero per cent mortgages over twenty years. This would have the effect of making it more affordable to buy than to rent and would cause a boom in the real estate and construction sectors for houses in the target range. To help defray any costs to the state by this initiative I propose that we again look at re-instituting a comprehensive property tax regime, but with a perpetual amnesty or a zero percent tax on all primary residences for all our citizens.

Should you see the benefits of these suggestions and act on them, you and your government would be single handedly transforming large sections of the people of this country from being handout seeking burdens on the state into contributing, family-oriented, progressive middle classed citizens; immediately reduce crime, and develop our nation as a whole for the better. A richer legacy you would be hard pressed to find, and you would be forever remembered for having re-engineered a failing State into a vibrant, evolved and civil society dedicated to the advancement of all its citizens and not just a privileged few.