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Stop Exploiting the Worker

FeaturesStop Exploiting the Worker

Belize’s news is currently dominated by the decision of the Briceño government to cut the wages of public servants by 10% for the next three years so as to save some $80 million dollars per year in an effort to comply with the dictates of the IMF to reduce by 2031 the public debt ratio from 134% of GDP to 60% of GDP or less.

Let’s be blunt. If Belize cuts back on its borrowing to reach a public debt ratio of 60% of GDP under current conditions while production continues to contribute the current 34% (agriculture, mining and manufacturing), the local population will flee, since Belize will become a real “hell on earth”. Our living standards will fall to one of the lowest globally. Yes, the current economic structure must change, but not the way the IMF and their flunkies want. This is not about doom and gloom; it’s real.

As I have been writing for the last two decades, there is always another way. But the major problem is that the PUP has been hijacked by persons who don’t know the creed/philosophy of George Price’s political party. These carpetbaggers, as Mr. Price used to call them, don’t know and don’t care. Their viewpoint/mindset is that of the oligarchy – the enemy of George Price’s mixed economy.

But to exploit nature means high wages for workers. There must be tariff protection of the goods made by those workers; money creation must be a public utility; soil fertility and agricultural productivity must be viewed as a product of capital investment; and technology and innovation will always create new methods to enter production, and thus profits and wages won’t diminish but instead lead to higher productivity and thus higher wages to workers. Public infrastructure must be a means to lower costs in an industrial society by introducing new methods of production and communications, and there must be public support of research and development. Remember, agriculture and manufacturing industries need a glue to hold them together. That glue is infrastructure. And most important is government intervention in an economy. Government as the “brain” must put a bridle on corporate bodies, and must establish the pursuit of happiness as a natural right of citizens.
Price’s principle is enshrined in the PUP’s Constitution as a sacred duty of government to create full employment and completely end poverty. The truth is that Belize’s private sector has created virtually no new jobs since Independence.

Here’s one solution to the current budget deficit. During the last quarter of the year 2019, the previous Prime Minister, Dean O. Barrow, introduced two bills for write-offs: for some $90 million dollars in land taxes to Belize’s one percent and the other write-off was for some $40,000 for young Perdomo. The majority of Belizeans went crazy against Mr. Perdomo with their bad-mind. But these same Belizeans had nothing to say about the $90 million, which was 2,250 times more than the measly $40,000. But it shows the mindset of the average Belizean. Only the current Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Cordel Hyde, had a comment in the House of Representatives in late 2019. Hon. Hyde was against the write-off to the big boys.

Carpetbaggers, leave the workers alone, especially now with the economic fallout of COVID-19. We need to create about 14,000 new high-paying jobs using Price’s mixed economy each and every year for the foreseeable future. That’s why the Belizean people elected the PUP – not for more austerity. Belizeans are tired of austerity.

Instead of punishing thousands of hardworking Belizeans, let the elites pay the $ 80 million. Reinstate the land tax of $ 90 million that was given away in 2019. That land tax will fall on the thirty or so large landholders – the elites who can easily afford to pay.

The government can also tax the 40% of unearned income ($1.4 billion dollars) that the FIRE section of our economy gets by not working. If government puts a tax of 15% on the useless FIRE section of our economy, some $210 million dollars will be available to reduce the public debts and pay the workers. Or we can tax capital gains. Every other country in the world has a capital gains tax, except Belize. Speculation does no good for an economy, except puts the burden on the ones who create the wealth of the country – the workers of the nation-state.

Now the carpetbaggers will say that in a recession or depression it’s not wise to raise or increase taxes. This is one of those misconceptions about economic theory that has Belize in economic trouble. It is a moral duty to increase taxes on speculation, economic rent, interest charges, and all illegal activities. These incomes are all unearned and contribute nothing to society and for common justice should be taxed. But the economists of the British school of thought will usually go after the worker, to put the burden on him, while the big fish laughs all the way to the bank.

And Mr. Carpetbaggers, let’s stop the blackmail of our Belizean citizens. There is not a choice between the IMF draconian austerity or a local homegrown austerity. They are the same. In 2005 Hon. Said Musa decided to follow the advice of Belize’s G-7 movement and their homegrown austerity measures. The result was one of the worst defeats the PUP suffered. Austerity never works. It is against human nature. Austerity has NEVER fixed the economy in any country. It destroys. Its purpose is to steal the little that the poor and middle-class have and to transfer wealth to the elites/the big boys. Austerity has never worked in the last 30+ years it has been tried, and it never will. Tell the IMF to go fly a kite!

The solution to Belize’s economic problems if we wish to have a high standard of living for our people is to industrialize Belize.

We also seem to forget a fundamental truth. The truth is that the baby-boomers, who are the leaders of today, and who all mostly went to universities, were indoctrinated. They believe with their whole heart the nonsense that the private sector is the sole creator of wealth. ”The sole source of wealth is the rise in the productivity of human labour effected through technological progress” (Lindo, 1995) Money is NOT wealth. Wealth is saved labour. Money is a means to exchange wealth. Wealth can only be created by human beings through the mind, since we are created in the image of our Creator.

We as a people and country have come full circle. Instead of the glorious dawn of a new Belize promised by our founding father, we are willingly returning to our colonial past. I am sad, but will end by repeating what I wrote before.

The “key” to genuine development and full economic independence, which will not reduce but rather eradicate poverty and create full employment in Belize – the objective of the philosophy of the nationalists of Belize, the George Price way — is to advance developments in basic economic infrastructure combined with rapid increases in energy flux densities per capita and per square mile. Government is the only institutional force which can implement rapid increases in energy flux densities and rapid advances in basic economic infrastructure. But advanced developments in both basic economic infrastructure and energy flux densities per capita and per square mile can only be ”squeezed from the human brain,” as Walker Lee Cisler (prominent American engineer) said, which means you need high-quality (or highly skilled) scientists and engineers. Genuine development is an act of human creation – it is a complete change of our present culture – a reversal from hopelessness and hedonism to one of progress, but it is hard work, not easy work.

We have to think our way out of the mess we are in.

The above is the world we live in – ruled by the 1%, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and the Rothschilds.

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