Garth Rattray | Don’t kill the golden goose

The ‘golden goose’ idiom is based on a German fairy tale ( die goldene gans), written by the brothers Grimm. In the fairy tale, there was a goose that laid one golden egg each day. The once poor farmer and his wife became very rich because of the goose. However, they became greedy and killed the goose in the expectation of getting at all the golden eggs at once. But, when the goose was killed and opened, the couple realised that it was only a regular goose on the inside, so they lost their daily supply of golden eggs and the source of their fortune. They became poor again.

Metaphorically, the ‘golden goose’ is whatever provides a very good source of income. An example would be our tourist industry. Once upon a time, our golden goose was the bauxite industry. However, what many people fail to recognise is that Jamaica’s real ‘golden goose’ is our hard-working citizens. Without them, nothing would be possible.

I am concerned about many of my fellow citizens in today’s Jamaica. There was a time when paying for electricity, telephone service, and water were not impactful. But the price increases in those amenities and goods have skyrocketed with no plateau in sight. There is no concomitant increase in earnings, so day-to-day living has become very difficult.

The World Bank classifies Jamaica as an upper-middle-income country based on our gross national income (GNI) per capita. Although, as a nation, we appear to be doing okay, the fact is that our current GNI per capita, is badly skewed because ‘per capita’ uses the income of the entire population to arrive at that figure. If someone were to calculate the GNI of our regular citizens and compare it to the GNI of our top income earners, the disparity would be astounding. Many people are driving around in automobiles that easily supersede the cost of the average home.

As is the case with many countries, Jamaica’s wealth distribution is very unequal. A mere 10 per cent of the population holds a shocking 60 per cent of the country’s wealth. And about 20 per cent of our citizenry lives below the poverty line. Many people struggle to buy grocery items. Money for transport, school, and clothing does not come easily.

RELATIVELY POOR

But what I find interesting is this, many of the people who spend (pay for goods and services) to provide income for the wealthy, are relatively poor. Additionally, they are the ones who also work for the wealthy, thus earning the wealthy even more money. Remember that, as a group, our regular citizens constitute the ‘golden goose’. It is because of the spending and labour of this group of citizens that the wealthy become wealthier. And, evidently, the wealthier that people become, it is the wealthier that they want to become.

Despite their obviously well-deserved ‘golden goose’ designation, the people who supply income for the wealthy (with their labour, their savings and their spending) are sometimes viewed as underlings. Some view them only as either the people who work to make them wealthy, the people who spend to make them wealthy, or the people who save to make them wealthy.

This group of citizens is in jeopardy. Although they work hard, they are not the real beneficiaries of their life-long efforts. Merchants (of every conceivable sort), bankers, and large investors reap, but do not nourish the economic soil for anyone but themselves.

Even if we are told that large (usually, international) entities are operating at a loss, their top-tier employees continue earning massive sums of money. If they were truly losing money, they would have pulled out of business years ago. Something worthwhile is keeping them here. They still manage to satisfy their investors, while laying off staff and putting the squeeze on the remaining compliment of workers.

PET PEEVE

Banks are my pet peeve because they get about 6.5 per cent interest from the Bank of Jamaica, they earn increasing quarterly profits in the billions of dollars, they levy fees on many transactions, they pay their top-tier staff in billions of dollars, while operating with minimal, lower-tier, stressed out staff. They finance people in need of loans by demanding substantial interest rates, yet they only offer fractions of one per cent on regular savings accounts.

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when many people could literally live off the interest from their regular savings accounts. That was the main reason for saving since we were little children with piggy banks and kiddie bank books. In those days some could live off the interest from the high-yield investment accounts. Nowadays, with the exorbitant prices for just about everything, you must have many tens of millions to simply live off the interest on your ‘high-interest-bearing’ savings.

Between the ridiculously low interest rate on regular savings accounts, the numerous fees, the tax on savings, and the inflation rate, it appears to me that the only benefits of saving in a regular bank is the Jamaica Deposit Insurance, and the utility of cashless transactions (which also attract fees).

Our citizens are being pummelled into desperation and despair by the extraordinary high cost of living, in part because some large business enterprises (including many with overseas investors) are insisting on maintaining their profit margin, no matter the [sometimes dire] circumstances of the people who generate income for them … the golden goose group. When the golden goose can no longer survive, as the old Ethiopians (Jamaican singing group) song said, “everything crash”.

Garth Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice, and author of ‘The Long and Short of Thick and Thin’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.