The Bahamas 2008 Budget just reshuffling the same deck of cards?

First Published: 2008-06-13

Praise is being heaped upon the FNM daily for a great budget. They are said to be stimulating the economy.

More confidence is placed in the FNM than the last PLP government, but to paraphrase Economist Russell Roberts: ”If governments can stimulate the economy, why do we ever have recessions?”

What the political elite seem to be missing is that, in order to create the so-called stimulus, they are merely reversing bad policy that slowed growth in the first place. Why enact those policies to start with if you think you have to remove them to stimulate growth?

Consideration is never given to permanently reducing the size of the Government (privatising), or limiting government spending and the debt levels that have the country hamstrung to a policy of printing money for cash flow, which only adds to the long term debt and instability of the Bahamian dollar and everything we work for.

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher ensured that civil servants were not thrown to wind. Civil Servants can be part of the solution with an equity stake in the agencies that are privatised if necessary. The important thing is that more enterprise is encouraged, creating more wealth, and this does not happen with restrictive government policy.

How long can we can just keep shuffling the same deck of cards, all the while building a national debt and monolithic government that is unsustainable?

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