Taxation makes no cents
Gordon Robinson
Jamaica is stone, blind bruk. She's no longer a proud, independent nation, but a perennial streetside beggar. As a direct consequence, she's been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She carries out the slavemaster's orders without question, cowering in abject fear from his whip. Her citizens are forced into poverty, malnutrition and stress by repeated doses of unbearable taxation. Formerly proud academic scholars, professionals, sportsmen, artistes and musicians, Jamaica's citizens are now all street hustlers, begging, borrowing and stealing to pay taxes.
Look dey now, everyt'ing crash!
Look dey now, everyt'ing crash!
Why do we pay these taxes?
Do we pay taxes to ensure reliable essential services like firefighting, water, telecommunications, or security? Hell, NO. Our broken-down fire trucks can't reach a fire in less than a week, and when they arrive, they have no water to put out the fire. Don't even ask if they have basic equipment like oxygen tanks, fire axes or working ladders. Our water supplies dwindle daily as uncollected floods destroy north-coast residents' properties. Two-thirds of supplies captured by the National Water Commission is lost on its way to us through leaky underground pipes lacking needed repairs for decades.
We have fancy telephones that gaggle, bang or twatter with ease, but rarely complete a call. Only 40 per cent of us have computers. Using these fancy phones to call the police is a waste of credit, as police phones ring without an answer or not at all. Some countries shape policy to attract telecoms investors, some look to bring manufacturers; Jamaica is the destination for criminals because crime does pay here. Lottery scammers are hailed as heroes, and when convicted (as rare a sight as a peel-neck John Crow eating blossoms off a treetop), pay minimal fines out of petty cash and laugh all the way to their next victim. We're vulnerable to gunmen 24/7.
Firemen strike; watermen strike;
telephone company, too;
down to the policemen, too.
What gaan bad a mawnin
can't come good a evening, whoy.
Do we pay taxes to fund health care for ourselves and our families? Hell, NO! If you ever spend a day at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) observing its triage system of health care; the non-existent equipment; and general 'facilities', first, you become violently sick, then you vow NEVER to get sick.
Do we pay taxes so our children can be educated by the State? Hell, NO! While the education ministry and teachers fight petty turf wars, Jamaica graduates 50 per cent illiterates every step of the way. We continue to undertrain, underequip and demotivate teachers (garbage in, garbage out) and then kowtow to their union's insistence that the final product (garbage) of this farcical circus be paid, whether or not it performs.
Low pass rates
Fewer than 40 per cent passes in maths, and 46% and 56% in English, are trumpeted as successes. The garbage Government created (teachers) are blamed by Government for persistent systemic failures. Forty per cent is the pass mark in most institutions, including the vaunted University of the West Indies (UWI), whose leaders can't distinguish between expert evidence and professional job performance. Which lifetime endeavour has a 40 per cent benchmark for success?
Our taxes should be ensuring that teachers are the best-trained, most-educated, highest-paid Jamaicans who are held to strict account for creating syllabi capable of educating our children for LIFE (not to take exams).
Do we pay taxes for improved infrastructure? Hell, NO! Our roads are minefields preventing our children from attending their abysmally funded, ill-equipped and understaffed 'schools' to receive their miseducation; our hospitals are purveyors of indignity; our sole light and power company must accept pervasive theft of its product as a business cost, yet can't even replace its smallest generators without jumping impossible obstacles; our buses have to be cannibalised for spare parts.
Why do we pay taxes?
We pay taxes and then pay again for expensive but poor public education. We pay taxes and then pay again for health care or wait interminably to pay (less) again for urgent surgical treatment for the most serious medical issues. We pay taxes and then pay, pay, pay again for frequent financially crippling repairs to motor cars because our roads are car traps. We pay taxes and then pay civil servants 'tokens' because, otherwise, service is interminably delayed. We pay taxes and then pay private lawyers gazillions to wait forever on an antiquated, creaking, short-handed, underpaid, underequipped justice system to misunderstand or mistreat your serious legal issues.
So, why do we pay taxes?
Elementary, my dear Watson. We pay taxes so that far too many MPs can be appointed ministers, junior ministers, ministers without portfolio, parliamentary secretaries (the single most insidious attack on the independence of the civil service) and earn variegated perks. Then they make politically correct decisions that keep them in the jobs, but ensure Jamaica's bankruptcy.
We pay taxes so a bloated civil service can be kept in a manner it couldn't otherwise sustain. The civil service's long paid holidays, quirky 'allowances' and plentyteen daily 'breaks' are sacrosanct. Your business is not. This is necessary so we can maintain too many ministries so that too many politicians can earn too many benefits for making too many atrocious decisions causing Jamaica's bankruptcy.
So, why do we pay taxes?
Finally, we pay taxes so we can ignore the immediate need for growth; for jobs for graduates; for health care and education. We pay so our leaders can ignore all these urgent priorities in favour of a 'primary surplus' of 7.5% to pay down our 'foreign' debt, which was incurred unnecessarily by said political leaders making sure they won the next election.
Every day carry bucket to the well
one day de bucket bottom mus' drop out.
Everyt'ing crash (Lord, whoa, yea)
sey look dey now!
Leonard Dillon, Stephen Taylor and Aston Morris formed The Ethiopians in the 1960s to record for Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd's Studio One, but didn't gain any great recognition until Morris left the group and they went to Duke Reid, who produced their first hit Train to Skaville (recorded at Dynamic Studios on the WIRL label). Legend has it that initially, The Duke only cut 300 copies of the record, which sold out in an hour. In 1968, they recorded their signature tune, Everything Crash, a political protest song critiquing the unreliability of all the essential services. Yes, I said 1968, NOT 2014. This falls in Arsenio Hall's famous category, 'Things that make you go hmmmmm.'
Five years later, Bob Marley, a frequent 'borrower' of lyrics from many places including the Bible and local proverbs, recorded one of his most successful songs. This is what we heard:
Reflexes had the better of me
and what is to be must be:
Every day the bucket a-go a well,
one day the bottom a-go drop out,
One day the bottom a-go drop out.
I say:
I - I - I - I shot the sheriff.
Lord, I didn't shot the deputy. Yeah!
I - I (shot the sheriff) -
But I didn't shoot no deputy, yeah! "
Time for revolt
Hopefully, Bob won't be a prophet in this regard. But, how much longer are we going to swallow this liquidated crap without revolt? When will we wake up and take charge? Jamaicans, the next time MPs tell you that they, not statutory authorities, should be making key decisions, RUN DEM!
The next time MPs say you must be a PNP or a 'dutty Labourite', RUN DEM! The next time MPs bang on desks in approval of yet another new tax, RUN DEM! The next time MPs applaud the illegal raid on a national institution funded by your contributions and mandated to find housing solutions for the poor, RUN DEM! The next time MPs pretend to remove a minister from an important national project that he has screwed up only to actually give him more power over the same project, RUN DEM!
Peace and love.
Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.