EDITOR, The Tribune.
FOR those of us who are accustomed to Caribbean economist Marla Dukharan’s frequently off-base and usually disproved observations about the nature and prospects of the Bahamian economy, her comments at Tuesday’s RF Economic Outlook were of little surprise.
Some of her assertions relative to our supposed over-dependence on tourism were just plain wrong on their face, while others demonstrated either a limited understanding of our circumstances or a deliberate mischaracterisation of them.
For instance, she lists “deteriorating human development” in support of her argument against our basic development model, when in fact, according to the latest (2022) report, The Bahamas has maintained its status in the “very high human development” category and actually risen three places from 58th to 55th in the world, while its nearest regional rival, Barbados, has fallen from 58th to 70th.
She also makes false comparisons in her analysis, such as comparing our debt history with that of Barbados without pointing out that Barbados has had progressive income tax since before its independence and we (alone among independent countries in the Americas) have none. If we did, our economy would have been in surplus since independence and poverty rates would be minuscule.
Ms Dukharan herself acknowledges this (to quote her: “the tax system is regressive and therefore pro-poverty”). But instead of recommending that we simply fix it, she quickly reverts to her default recommendation that we cozy up to the International Monetary Fund – a monstrous, neoliberal institution that is hopefully headed into oblivion – together with the remaining architecture of post-war western global hegemony.
Instead of admitting that freely chosen top-down economics and a freely chosen regressive tax structure are in fact the whole story of The Bahamas’ self-imposed debt “problem”, she instead advocates that we tie our fortunes to the world’s worst promoter of toxic neoliberal economics whose “cures” have caused Barbados’ precipitous fall from grace in terms of human development.
No that you, Ms Dukharan.
ANDREW ALLEN
Nassau,
March 15, 2023.
Comments
bahamianson 1 year, 1 month ago
What about our chief economist making inaccurate remarks in the house of assembly a few.wrrks.ago? I am talking about our Prime Minister.
Dawes 1 year, 1 month ago
The letter writer assumes a lot. To say if we had income tax there would be no debt and little poverty is strange. Pretty much every country that has income tax has both of these, so why would we be any different. What rate does the writer propose the income tax to be. And what effect would that rate have on the number of persons paying? As a note i am not saying we shouldn't have income tax, i just feel before it is introduced we need to look at the full effect and also what the rate would be.
skeptic 1 year, 1 month ago
In terms of economic resilience, we are far from "most countries". Most countries have less than a tenth of the foreign investment per capita than we do. Most countries do not have inflows of FDI measured in the billions in a population of 400,000.
My point is that our domestic economy is artificially subdued by the effects of regressive taxes (which subdue disposable income among the group that does most of the consumer spending). Were this not the case (simply by doing what most other countries do), the effects would be to promote the translation of foreign investment into growth on the domestic side, promoting employment, which is now subdued.
As for debt, this is very easy to calculate. Simply add up the revenues we have forgone by even a low level income tax (say 10% on corporate income and salaries above $100,000) and compare that to accumulated debt. Add to this the effects of a more robust economy that will obviously result from less taxes on poor people and the matter speaks for itself.
ExposedU2C 1 year, 1 month ago
She's an irrelevant woke imbecile with a bureaucratic mentality. In other words, she exemplifies why misguided intelligence without common sense is worse than no intelligence at all.
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