EDITOR, The Tribune.
To those Bahamians who were paying attention, the emptiness, shallowness and myopia of the FNM’s supposed project to assist middle class professionals with access to affordable land was sharply exposed by the response of the Clearing Banks Association to the initiative.
Warning that its members are motivated by risk, rather than politics, it said “We don’t want to be in the land selling business or the liquidation business. We want to give (loans) to a customer who will pay their loans”, which may disqualify many applicants under such a scheme, notwithstanding even government guarantees.
If this latest political gimmick has the feel of a distraction from the real issues facing our country (young professionals included) that’s because it is exactly that, as the Clearing Banks Association seems to understand.
At its root, the Bahamian middle class (or what’s left of it) does not have a land problem. It has a disposable income problem. And this problem relates directly to thirty years of policies (initiated by the FNM but never sufficiently reversed by the PLP) that shift disposable income away from the middle and working classes and into the hands of wealthy corporations and individuals.
When it came to power in 1992, the Free National Movement gifted its wealthy backers in the jewelry, furniture, car sales and consumer goods industries with a policy always resisted by the Pindling government: it permitted them to enter unlimited direct salary deduction contracts with government employees.
While even conscionable employers like Atlantis restricted the scope of these contracts, not so for government, whose employees often took home a pittance after deductions for credited consumption. Does it take a genius to see that this, among other policies, militates against a landowning middle class?
At the same time, government’s senseless and internationally embarrassing refusal to tax the incomes of wealthy individuals and domestic corporations (including those it gifted with direct access to civil servants’ income) has been financed partly at the expense of (frozen) public sector wages and partly by the accumulation of crippling fees, taxes and charges on everything – from 12 percent VAT to the $140 charged for a COVID-test (free in most countries) and increased Bahamasair rates to travel inter-island.
Having created an environment where wages are intentionally suppressed while costs increase daily and the rich live tax free, government now proposes to solve the problem of a dwindling middle class by giving out Crown lands to “young professionals” who even the banks can foresee will never be able to pay for homes on them. It would be comical if it were not so tragic.
ANDREW ALLEN
Nassau,
April 20, 2021.
Comments
realitycheck242 3 years ago
You can tank former pm HAI for that no minimum salary deduction policy decision in 1992. That was the beginning of the destruction of the middle class. After the drug era of the 1980's Bahamians who fell for that policy and maxed out their salary with deductions unknowingly threw financial sacrifice and discipline out of the proverbial window to satisfy the greedy banks and credit unions thus forfeiting the chance to invest and create meaningful wealth for themselves. We need to learn from and develope the mindset of the chinese and think in generational terms. Instead we choose to run to Miami for shopping every chance we get and engage in habits for instant pleasure to a large degree.
Dawes 3 years ago
Hmm someone voluntarily enters into an agreement to pay over time for an item via salary deduction and it is the store owners fault. Whilst anyone can tell you that way of paying is a rip off, no one is forcing people to do that. Is the letter writer saying that civil servants (in particular, as they get mentioned a lot) are not smart enough to look after their affairs?
tetelestai 3 years ago
Come on man, you cannot be that obtuse?
Do you not understand Mr. Allen's letter? Pedantic, aren't you?
Dawes 3 years ago
Yes i understand Mr. Allens letter. It is putting the blame of civil servants being paid a pittance after deductions at the fault of those who get the deductions, rather then the person who decided to enter into the deduction voluntarily in the first place. Yes it is asinine that people can have deductions of up to 70% of their salary ( i think its this amount), but yet again no one forced them to and only they know how much they can afford to pay out and be OK. Or should we just say no deductions and they hear the complaint that people are unable to get a car as they can't pay full, or unable to get a fridge etc. Then what would your plan be? Somehow we as a society have got to point where people do not need to take personal responsibility for their actions which seems strange.
Proguing 3 years ago
Yep, Mr. Allen described government employees as fools who are incapable of making decisions about their finances, and that the government should make these decisions for them, because as we know governments always make the right decisions…
ohdrap4 3 years ago
A major appliance retailer always announces on the radio:
you do not have to have money
you just have to have salary to deduct
tribanon 3 years ago
The civil servant salary deduction matter was indeed a huge and most wrongful gift by Hubert A. Ingraham to those who bank-rolled his election win in 1992. Civil servants quickly started borrowing like there was no tomorrow from Commonwealth Bank which was then majority beneficially owned by members of the Symonette family. That family made out like bandits from the sky rocketed increase in Commonwealth Bank's earnings, not to mention the very significant appreciation in the value of its shares back then.
What most Bahamians may not know is that Hubert Ingraham went even one step further for his favourite financial backers. The government he led passed the legislation that gives consumer lenders like Commonwealth Bank the first bite at the estate of a deceased civil servant to satisfy any outstanding amounts owed that were not satified by direct salary reduction. Many a Bahamian family who thought they stood to inherit something from a deceased member of their family who was employed by government have learned the hard way that that is not necessarily the case after the bank gets its first bite of the apple.
tribanon 3 years ago
For clarification:
Upon the death of a civil servant enrolled in a bank's salary deduction scheme, anything owed by government (including all pension and death benefits of any kind) will be paid directly by government to the bank in order to satisy all amounts owed by the deceased civil servant to the bank.
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