Ronald Thwaites | Delusions and realities

I thought fake news was an essential ingredient of Trumpian dystopia. Apparently not so. Our own examples are evident for all to see – and feel.

We are still lied to that the “$1.5” tax concession was revenue-neutral. Now, we are to accept that there are “no new taxes” in the Budget, when all of us are paying more as tax every new day as inflation, higher input costs and currency slide affect each taxed product or service.

So why not talk the truth to ourselves, painful as it is, and thus create a basis of trust and shared struggle? To hear the brightest and most powerful in the land prattle the ‘twaddle’, reduces our confidence in political stewardship and aggravates our sense of being taken advantage of.

Experience gives the lie to the deceptions and exposes a bankruptcy of that radical thought about political economy, which could really ease ordinary people’s plight. We need to add value to the currency. Changing the pictures is a banality in the face of that unattended need.

Then, there is the talk of helping the poor. Of course, it is essential to target public assistance to those really in need. But wait. Easily more than a million Jamaicans – the more than half the workforce earning near the minimum wage, plus the unemployed and the huge number of underemployed – all need a cash transfer to be able to eat. Most of us will not be able to afford higher transport costs. So the money may sound big, but the share-out is very small. How much food a once-off 10 grand can buy? Which light bill it can pay? Divide two billion by one million people in need; you know how much ‘relief’ each gets?

NEW HEIGHTS

Delusionary thought reached new heights with the trumpeting (sic) of the theological free-market principle that giving the predatory banks free rein is the best policy. (Fitz Jackson, your motion is dead!) How long will it be till the $2,500-assisted accounts start to attract fees? How will the yearly 1,000 electric cars assist the operators of the one million oil guzzlers now choking our roads, with more coming? How much faith can ordinary citizens have in a Budget premised on the wrong price of energy and an unrealistic expectation of inflation?

One of the surest signs of Trump’s chicanery was his capacity to defend one side of an argument today and the opposite in the next breath. Isn’t that the same mentality we heard last week re bank fees and avoiding partisan strife? Who spoke about ‘tone-deafness’ again?

You talk about political unity, and in the next paragraph of the speech launch a tirade against those who you, same one, just said you want to reconcile with! How that go?

You admit the desperate perils of energy and food dependency, and ‘pree’ how you really check for education reform, but there is no substantial new money in the big, yellow book for any of that to be stimulated.

And we are to believe that all this adds up to ‘recovery’, while exponential resources financial and human (check 700 nurses and uncounted senior teachers) are fleeing the country, same time as we can’t afford to properly feed hungry pickney at school?

And the satraps clapped frenziedly, and we resume the anaesthesia of bashment to ease the pain.

I am told that from an accountant’s point of view and, by contrast to what the wicked People’s National Party would or didn’t do, this is a great Budget. After all, Mr Fitch and the wealthy insiders, who can manipulate money and raise prices to deliver fantastic profits in these worst of times, are very pleased.

The rest of us on fixed incomes, $9,000 income, and no income, must hug up reduced living standards, more stress,and, yes, more social disorder. Nothing fake there.

What a disappointment!

“The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it and which can only lead to new crises.” (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel.)

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.