The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

It should matter to nobody what Financial Secretary Marlon Johnson’s views (or lack of them) on religious matters are. What should and does matter is that he and his political masters continue to pursue and justify fiscal and economic policies that have made The Bahamas among the most unequal places on earth and continue to needlessly dampen its economic prospects.

Johnson and his political masters continually speak about the fiscal constraints exposed (not caused) by short term emergencies like Hurricane Dorian and COVID-19, while ignoring the basic context that these constraints only exist because our leaders continue to exempt wealthier residents and corporations from worldwide norms of progressive taxation and place most of the tax burden on the poor (via consumption taxes).

Bahamians who live glued to US television probably find themselves aghast at revelations of Donald Trump’s minimal income tax contributions, which result from clever accounting and legal loopholes.

Yet these same Bahamians appear impervious to the fact that in their own country no such loopholes are even needed: government policy brazenly transfers wealth from the poor to the rich by exempting the wealthy from any income tax at all and making up the shortfall with taxes on consumption (i.e. the poor).

Some of these Bahamians will even vote next time round for a party that agreed to keep a Real Property tax break on billionaires in Lyford Cay in the very same week that it raised VAT to 12 percent on working Bahamians.

In the last few weeks, the Economic Recovery Committee, of which Mr. Johnson is a part, has predictably used the COVID-19 crisis to roll out a slew of recommendations, most of which prescribe the same poisonous patent medicines of either easing business for foreign investors (on the laughably false premise that we don’t get enough foreign investment) or removing tax exemptions and restrictions in favour of Bahamians (the drivers of the domestic economy). They will sell this snake oil on the back of the public’s undue reverence for “experts” who are in fact merely representatives of business interests.

Whatever Mr Johnson’s supposed spiritual sins, they pale in comparison to the twisted economic philosophy that he and his colleagues continue to impose on The Bahamas – a country with almost limitless prospects.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

October 25, 2020.