What's your plan?

[Panajar]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Jamaica is not rudderless. It Is perfectly under the control of those who make billions yes with a B and in US dollars too. </div></div>

[evanovitch]

EDITORIAL - Speak the truth and collect the taxes

EDITORIAL - Speak the truth and collect the taxes
Published: Sunday | December 27, 2009


One of the bits of advice we offer to Prime Minister Golding is that he muzzle the would-be spin doctors attempting to cast the bungling of the Christmas tax package as a deliberate ploy by the administration to gain leverage with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by demonstrating political intolerance for the measures.
Such an argument, especially when it comes from senior ministers, not only insults the intelligence of the Jamaican people, but erodes the credibility of the administration, diminishes trust, and risks undermining public support for the difficult measures that are necessary to haul the country from its deep economic crisis. What is required is for Jamaicans to be given the facts frankly, and for there to be equity in how the burden the country will have to bear is shared.

It was the failure of this sense of equity in the initial $21.8 billion tax package, unveiled by Finance Minister Audley Shaw, which triggered the public revolt, causing Mr Golding to revise the measures in his December 23 broadcast. Mr Shaw's proposals, particularly the increase of the rate of the general consumption tax (GCT), and the widening of the range of goods and services that came under its cover, were deemed to be skewed against the poor.

The Government has retreated from applying GCT to more products. And on the face of it, the new measures, including raising the rate of personal income tax by between 2.5 and 10 percentage points, for people who earn over J$4 million annually, are finding better favour with the public.

Stop-gap measure

Mr Golding, however, would be wrong to feel that all is now well on the taxation front and that the administration can now concentrate on completing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for US$1.2 billion in credit for balance-of-payments support. The fact is that the adjustment of the tax rate on, in the context of Jamaica, high-end earners, is, at best, only a stop-gap measure. There is need for broader tax reform and a more aggressive effort at tax collection. The administration must, as a matter of urgency, revisit the Matalon Report of six years ago and move to implement its recommendations with the necessary updates.

Indeed, if the political will exists, widening the tax net is not as hard to do as is often made out by public officials.

More than a year and a half ago, Mr Golding told Parliament that outside of pay-as-you-earn employees, <span style="font-weight: bold">a mere 4,000 other persons were in Jamaica's income tax roll. His estimate was that the figure should be in the region of a quarter of a million. Many of those who escape the tax net are themselves high-income earners, who are quite visible and easily identified, like the bulk of the 500 doctors, who, according to Mr Golding, a recent survey indicated were not on the tax roll.</span> Not only must tax evaders be pursued, but the Government should provide monthly updates on compliance. Enhanced compliance will earn far more than the $1.3 billion the Government expects to collect because of the rate adjustments.

Improved tax compliance, is of course, only one element in the equation for fixing Jamaica's problems. There is much heavy-lifting to be done, for which the Government will need lots of help.

This is no time for cheap politics and cynicism.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: [email protected] or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.

[evanovitch]

500 years, 500 lashes...

500 years, 500 lashes...

COMMON SENSE

JOHN MAXWELL


Sunday, December 27, 2009



SOME of what passes for commentary today would not have been considered odd by people who ran Jamaica half-a-millennium ago - people like Sir Henry Morgan and his bosom buddy and criminal accomplice, Sir Thomas Modyford.

Those two felonious financiers flourished shortly after Jamaica was first captured by the English. According to 'M&amp;M', the English had a divine right to whatever assets, fixed or floating, happened to be within their reach. If these assets happened to have been claimed by the Taino or Inca or the Spaniards or anyone else, judgement was simple - it all depended on firepower. Morgan and Modyford probably had an aphorism to match ours: &quot;T'ief from t'ief, God laugh!&quot;

The Spanish should be able to accept the sacking of their cities like Panama, Porto Bello and Cartagena, the capture of their gold-laden galleons, the murder of their burghers and the rape of their wives and daughters. Globalisation is the new name for an old system - what George Soros, one of the world's richest men, calls &quot;Gangster Capitalism&quot;.

Just about 700 columns ago, in this newspaper, in March 1997 <span style="font-weight: bold">I noted the departure of several commercial enterprises from Jamaica to happier hunting grounds, where labour costs are infinitesimal and unions non-existent. </span>
&quot;<span style="font-weight: bold">Jamaican development is under serious threat from The Free Market and the ethics of the slave trade,&quot; I said then</span>.

&quot;The UWI, itself now apparently in the grip of the free market hysteria, a mutated form of the Pyramid fever virus, is to invite Professor Jeffrey Sachs to tell us how best we can divest ourselves of our intellectual and cultural goods to follow Thatcher, Reagan and their fellow Titans into the empyrean realms of monetarist Paradise. As the newest, most fashionable cults tell us, all we have to do is to submit. &quot;&quot;Salvation is simple. It consists of devaluation and deregulation. If you can't compete, devalue. If laws, cultures, trade unions and ethics get in the way, deregulate and beef up your police forces.&quot;

<span style="font-weight: bold">Rule of the Cognitive Elite</span>


In 1997 the buzz was about a book called The Bell Curve, an earnest farrago of racist theory published three years earlier but then being hailed as a prototype of a new world order. This capitalist manifesto for the 21st century would build on the ruins of socialism, altruism and humane solidarity.

As I wrote then, The Bell Curve purported to prove that there was a divinity that shaped our ends and that this divinity was Race. Inner-city Blacks, the authors Murray and Herrnstein said, were not as clever as whites (at least in the US) and were destined to become a permanent underclass, producing crime and the other primary products of which they were capable.

In their vision of the Custodial State, the cognitive elite (white) &quot;with its commanding position, will implement an expanded welfare state for the underclass that also keeps it out from underfoot&quot;.

&quot;In short, by custodial state, we have in mind a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business. ...Extrapolating from current trends, we project that the policies of custodialism will not only be tolerated but actively supported by a consensus of the cognitive elite. To some extent, we are not even really projecting, but reporting. The main difference between the position of the cognitive elite that we portray here and the one that exists today is to some extent nothing more than the distinction between tacit and explicit.

&quot;...The central law of the marketplace may briefly be summarised as follows: Free and competitive markets bring supply and demand into equilibrium and thereby assure the best allocation of resources. To bring these conditions about, Jeffrey Sachs and his co-religionists prescribe reforms imposed by stealth, speed and compulsion, an economic blitzkrieg in which sudden, overwhelming reform simply sweeps aside the defenders of deficient systems, their central banks and the other impedimenta of superstition. In Sachs' view it is at best a waste of time to seek a broad consensus for reform because most people don't understand why reform is necessary and will block it if possible. Deliverance brooks no argument. All we need to do is send in the economic equivalent of the Waffen SS and that will be that.&quot;

<span style="font-weight: bold">The Capitalist Threat</span>


At the time this was written I was immensely cheered to discover that the billionaire George Soros seemed to share my thinking. In the February 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Soros considered that &quot;the untrammelled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.&quot;

For Soros, capitalism, like Nazism and Communism, seeks to justify its claim to ultimate truth by an appeal to science. The ultimate truth is, as Soros says, beyond the reach of mankind, because we are part of the reality we seek to comprehend. In social and political affairs the participants' perceptions help to determine reality -- as postulated in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. [The fact of observation itself affects the thing observed.] In such situations the facts do not necessarily constitute reliable criteria for judging the truth of statements.

&quot;... in economics, unlike the natural sciences, the material facts can influence the result of any reaction. Atoms of oxygen and carbon can only combine with each other in certain proportions. The decision of an industrialist may depend on objective facts, but may depend more on how his wife treated him last night, or on a hunch.&quot;

I will conclude my visit with Soros by another quote, even more relevant now than in 1997.

&quot;<span style="font-weight: bold">In many parts of the world control of the state is so closely associated with the creation of private wealth that one might speak of robber capitalism or the 'gangster state'.</span>

&quot;In the social sphere what is effective is not necessarily identical with what is right, because of the reflexive connection between thinking and reality. ...our sense of right and wrong is endangered by our preoccupation with success, as measured by money. Anything goes, as long as you can get away with it.&quot;

This axiom is no better expressed than in the recent treatment of the people of Honduras, Haiti and Palestine. It is nowhere more succinctly expressed by President Obama's chief economic heavyweight, Lawrence Summers, who, 18 years ago was vice-president of the World Bank.

In a memo to staff of the bank, Summers wrote: &quot;'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons: &quot;...the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that; ...under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City; ... The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high-income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate [sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under five mortality is 200 per thousand.&quot;

<span style="font-weight: bold">Inequality and Human Rights</span>


This is the thinking of one of the world's most influential thinkers and leaders, an adviser to two presidents of the US, and the moral and intellectual helmsman of globalisation and modern capitalism. You may now be able to understand the Copenhagen debacle.

Summers is the paradigm of those so-called investors, casino gamblers and felonious financiers whose recklessness and greed have driven the price of food out of the reach of the poor, whose speculation in sub-prime mortgages and other 'instruments' have pauperised the American working class and destroyed the savings and pensions of millions around the world. Ten years ago, in 2000, Mr Bill Gates' wealth was estimated at over $100 billion, just slightly less than the wealth of 600 million people in the least developed countries.

The World Bank's Human Development Report for that year said global inequalities had increased in the 20th century to the point where they count as violations of human rights. The inequalities have increased &quot;by orders of magnitude out of proportion to anything experienced before&quot;. The gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest countries was about three to one in 1820, 35 to one in 1950, 44 to one in 1973, and 72 to one in 1992. Today it is more like 150 to one.

<span style="font-weight: bold">It is in the interest of the rich that Jamaicans pay an interest rate 40 times as much as Americans, Britons or Japanese. We have paid back several times as much as we borrowed to build schools, to repair hurricane damage and to buy Pajeros or whatever for ginnigogs. We are told that we must make sacrifices, must reduce the taxes paid by the rich to attract 'Development' while we watch our jobs outsourced to the Dominican Republic, China, Salvador and other happier hunting grounds, where labour costs are infinitesimal and labour unions non-existent. </span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">We have never defaulted on our debt although the British, Americans, Mexicans, Russians, Argentinians, Germans and French and many others have done so. It is our duty to pay the usurious interest of the investors who double their money in three years. It sounds like a good reason to hand the Usain Bolt stadium over to UTech. We need to produce more cannon fodder for globalisation. Our culture and our talents are of no account. </span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">We have never defaulted because we understand and accept the Summers/Herrnstein Bell Curve principle that we must be satisfied with our subservient status, generating crime and such other primary products as we are capable. </span>

It is not our business to dream, to make music or to be the best in the world at anything.<span style="font-weight: bold"> Our jobs are to be foot soldiers in the great march of the grey masses, the fertiliser for real wealth. </span>
(Historical note: <span style="font-weight: bold">Under the Government Savings Bank Law, repealed by the PNP in 1958, it was illegal for the savings of Jamaicans in the bank to be invested in Jamaica. The GSB invested in the South Africa of Malan, Verwoerd and Vorster</span>.)

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

Any person that argues that Jamaica (and I mean it citizens) is getting a net benifit from the tourism industry is deluding themselves.


I happen to agree with you on this one.

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

<span style="font-size: 14pt"> This is gonna take all night</span> ow this is truly hilarious....the assumption that the little bit ur friends contribute matter r even make an impact on the wellbeing of the Jcan economy

<span style="font-size: 14pt">I said NOTHING about my friends making some gigantic ECONOMIC impact...what I AM saying is that I have quite a FEW of them who ARE in fact building, and or spending more actual time in Jamaica than SOME people on Jamaicans.com who from their comfortable homes in Canada and the US try to verbally and in writing and in theory run Jamaica but wouldn't go there as often, for as long, NOR build there, does THAT clear that part up??? </span>

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

not to mention the presumptuousness of y Jcans migrate...after all we know that African Americans have never migrated from their paradise that is the USA, first world ameneties and rights as it has ALWAYS afforded them and heck, forgive yaad fi giving dem Marcus who showed dat not all black man felt being black was a curse,...

and all the brain power the migrated Jcans have brought to the USA n the bizniz acumen an ingenuity of even the likkle man...afta all, if we neva badda dan bad, all would not be seeking their comfort zone away from dem fuss worl country

but hey, the 1.5million of us who pay taxes here, contribute here, have built up from scratch <span style="font-size: 17pt">I personally have never wanted to throw Berlin walls around America and not admit anyone from Jamaica...Oh and thanks for Marcus, we like him last time I checked </span>

[diabolical_Tanya]

Re: What's your plan?

I think the GOJ made a mistake selling out tourism interests to foreign entities (spanish, butch et al)

What they should have done was leased the land to them and taxed them heavily on the profits before said profits went off shore.

The city I live in does rely on tourism (in addition to O&amp;G) There is a 5% tax on rooms that goes directly to the provincial Govt. (tourism levy dem call it)

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

I have seen where folks claim they want the industry locked down, not once but hundreds of times.
<span style="font-size: 17pt"> I agree, if not said in those exact words, it certainly always seemed to be the jist of what was being said, in so many words.</span>

[halfwaytree]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Diabolical_Tanya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I think the GOJ made a mistake selling out tourism interests to foreign entities (spanish, butch et al)

What they should have done was leased the land to them and taxed them heavily on the profits before said profits went off shore. </div></div>

I agree! However were these prime beachfront properties the governments to lease or were they owned privately?

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Curmudgeon_Milo</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Diabolical_Tanya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I think the GOJ made a mistake selling out tourism interests to foreign entities (spanish, butch et al)

What they should have done was leased the land to them and taxed them heavily on the profits before said profits went off shore. </div></div>

I agree! However were these prime beachfront properties the governments to lease or were they owned privately? </div></div>
There's a good question...Dr. Dudd will be along soon with a breakdown per parcel lot with the exact stats on who owned what, who paid what for what, all other pertinent details.

[evanovitch]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Marilyn</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <span style="font-size: 14pt"> This is gonna take all night</span> ow this is truly hilarious....the assumption that the little bit ur friends contribute matter r even make an impact on the wellbeing of the Jcan economy

<span style="font-size: 14pt">I said NOTHING about my friends making some gigantic ECONOMIC impact...what I AM saying is that I have quite a FEW of them who ARE in fact building, and or spending more actual time in Jamaica than SOME people on Jamaicans.com who from their comfortable homes in Canada and the US try to verbally and in writing and in theory run Jamaica but wouldn't go there as often, for as long, NOR build there, does THAT clear that part up??? </span> </div></div>


wat is not clear is y u felt it necessary to throw all that bit in...if u consider that remittances r a huge part of the country's GDP, how then can u assume that members of this board who r in the disapora r not contributing to the economy...would they contribute more if they gave up their job as an accountant here, an went bak home where such jobs r few and far between?...in ur haste to find fault taking with a rebuttal to ur statements, u fail to see how u made presumptions and disparaging remarks in the first place...this throwing up of people sitting and remarking outside of Ja shows the lack of knowledge of the good old give an take that is part and parcel of Jcans...they discuss any and everything save truly personal bizniz...this board is a distraction, not a platform for most to tell wat they do....it is the stand in for the many discussions that go on as a matta of course

for u to make the statement that u did shows some bias perhaps and some illwill that u now try to bely in the many statements...that is my take

[evanovitch]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Curmudgeon_Milo</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Diabolical_Tanya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I think the GOJ made a mistake selling out tourism interests to foreign entities (spanish, butch et al)

What they should have done was leased the land to them and taxed them heavily on the profits before said profits went off shore. </div></div>

I agree! <span style="font-weight: bold">However were these prime beachfront properties the governments to lease or were they owned privately</span>? </div></div>

that is wat FINSAC is to answer in part but will neva totally clear up....the matter of govament ministers getting dem hands on &quot;Queen's&quot; land fi likkle an nutten n den selling off to all an sundry, is a question that has neva been fully answered from the days of movie stars 'discovering' Ja's beaches

btw, interesting celebrity savanger hunt, golf tournament etc currently being shown from Ja...the lady who dem interviewed re holdings down dere , well ,said holdings got off good via FINSAC...irony dat she represents the face of tourism in the island while di goodly minister spoke of the many SERVICES we offer via our tourism

[Nanook]

Re: What's your plan?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">this board is a distraction, not a platform for most to tell wat they do</div></div>

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

Aware that the other big chunck of the economic picture in Jamaica OTHER than tourism....is the huge money coming to friends relatives, property, upkeep etc. from members of the disapora...HOWEVER,,,,,their issue was not the subject of said thread.....it is TOURISM...TOURISM dollars, and TOurist in general.

If we deflect the subject disaporic contributions or MY perceptions or misconceptions about them, then are we talking about what the thread was intended??? I thnk not.

So to all members of the disapora...your contribitions home are recognized.

Now here is a question for you which gets BACK to the main topic.....if TOURISM went Poof and all of it;s entities, TOMORRW, can the Disapora support Jamaica???? WIthout it???

qUESITON pART 2, once again....back to original topic....without throwing up newpaper articles, invoking the ghost of Marcus Garvey... or other things....what's YOUR Plan???

[Marilyn]

Re: What's your plan?

wat is not clear is y u felt it necessary to throw all that bit in

<span style="font-size: 17pt">If it's not clear to you after me explaining it twice already....let me try one more time.....plain and simple there are SOME people on here who blow a lot of hot air about Jamaica..yet wouldn't go back there to live, or stay for long periods....or hell haven't been there in 5 or more years who seem to have all the dang answers....where as I know quite a few people who DO go (and I am not speaking of little vacation trips here, I am speaking of extended amounts of time for YEARS now, consitently), DO live there DO build there, and are making a go of it..... and these are MORE people than just folks on this board that YOU may know about...there are QUITE A FEW </span>