WANTED FOR DEVELOPMENT - A CIVILISED COUNTRY

When I wrote my book last year, I started out looking at the economic numbers and tried to analyze the challenges and why Jamaica did not over 47 years achieve any real development. After looking at the numbers I concluded in the last two chapters that in order for Jamaica to achieve the elusive development, we must of necessity first see a new political and social order.

Included in this new order "must of necessity... [be]...a focus on developing the human capital across society". The fact is that Jamaica will never be ready for any real development unless we address the social and political challenges that face the country. Sure we may be able to eke out isolated bouts of three percent economic growth occasionally, but that is not development. In fact the growth we have seen, and what is being projected in the IMF programme, has come and will continue to come from international begging...I mean remittances.

Fading productive base
The truth is that the productive base of Jamaica will never grow until we address the social ills facing the country. Until then the truth is that the only real economic systems that will service Jamaica well are feudalism and slavery, which effectively is disguised by political independence. But if you tear away all the hoopla surrounding so called independence, we still have a significantly oppressed citizenry (controlled in the new feudal farms called garrisons) and we still rely on developed countries for debt and aid. So are we truly independent.

Modern day economics of course assumes that a civilized society exists, and does not consider the type of widespread corruption and high crime rates Jamaica has. So development and market theory does not assume a significant cost of business as extortion or that government will consistently run fiscal deficits in order to satisfy a political rather than economic motive. Economic theory assumes that the self correcting mechanism of the market will be allowed to operate and that governments will work in tandem with the market but will intervene in order to allow a smoothing out effect, thus eliminating any violent market reactions that will dismember the working class.

These assumptions do not hold in Jamaica, and therefore our relentless pursuit to practice an efficient market economy is futile.

Last week I wrote about the massive gun find in Mountain View, and said then that the economic recovery will of course depend on how the Commissioner of Police addresses the fight against corruption and crime. I also mentioned that resources were being wasted dealing with issues that should not occur in the first place such as Armadale and Horizon. The week after of course the Armadale report was revealed, which even more frightening to me than the report was the fact that the authorities had it in their possession for well over a month.

So to me the real horror of police brutality, horrendous prison conditions, and neglect of children's rights is not the fact that they occur, but that the authorities over the years have neglected to do anything about it. I am of course horrified by Armadale but let's be honest these things have been occurring consistently over the years. The only difference this time is that some children died and more importantly credit must be given to the Prime Minister for immediately setting up the commission of inquiry. I mean over the past few weeks the Child Development Agency (CDA) had been running these nice sounding ads that anyone who knows about child abuse and does not report it is guilty of an offence. Of course this seemed to me to be nothing but PR, as in plain sight children continue to be abused every day. When children are allowed by their parents to spend the day at traffic lights wiping windscreens or selling on the roads isn't that abuse in plain sight. So what has the CDA or any child protection agency done about it? Give me a break. This does not require resources.

If being cynical you could say that when you look at the animated picture of children on the CDA website they look like they are in strait jackets. So go figure.

When police are accused of brutality against citizens what is done about it, and what is done about the simple things like night noise and blatant traffic violations. The police can't tell me that they need any special investigative arm up setup to deal with these two in your face but important law and order situations.

In May 2008 I wrote an article called 'Déjà vu", where in reaction to the public and leadership outcry against the assassination of a young lady in York Plaza, I indicated that the public outcry seemed like déjà vu as every time there is a crime upsurge everyone speaks out only for nothing to be done to correct the systems. Similarly when Armadale happened last year there was a big outcry and if Nationwide and the Observer did not carry the report everything would have been "no problem". So what will change after we all get tired of talking about this instance and a few people resign? Again déjà vu.

Threat to the economic programme
So while the Finance Minister is busy trying to get interest rates down and manage the debt and fiscal accounts, other parts of the bureaucracy are ensuring that all his efforts come to nil. It is like the finance department trying to control costs and the marketing department making as much contacts as they can but when the customer comes to the organization for service they are abused by the operations personnel. So the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) will be put in place and the interest rates will be immediately lowered, and provide a significant fiscal boost, but the operational people will ensure that the economic programme for improvement is not maintained.

This is because investment decisions are more driven by the need for social stability and economic predictability. People use these factors to determine risk and return on investment more than interest rates. So we have projected that the rate of devaluation will be about four percent per annum, and one can get approximately four percent on US$ deposits. So why invest in Jamaican dollar assets at 10 or 12 percent when one can realize 8 to 9 percent on US$ assets if your money is going to be at risk from the social and economic instability in Jamaica.

This is the real risk to the JDX as no amount of monetary policy can work in a country where citizens are not geared towards productivity either because of the new feudal farms (garrisons), they are crying out for justice from police brutality, or they are being turned into criminals by the state when they go to correctional institutions.

If you look at Jamaica's social development over the years we have fallen behind many other countries. Again quoting from my book - "...of 101 countries surveyed [Human Development Index Report] in 1975, Jamaica ranked 39th or in the top 39 percent...By 2005, however, Jamaica was ranked 101st of 177 countries...or in the top 57 percent." Clearly although our ranking may have improved absolutely we have fallen behind many countries.

In short what Jamaica must first become if it is to achieve the necessary economic and social development to move forward is a civilized society.