Bahamas Government creating a welfare state?

by Rick Lowe

Over the past few weeks, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham has obviously been feeling helpless with the many requests that he confronts for help from people grappling with the unkind effects of what is becoming a world wide recession.

Decent Bahamians from all walks of life are beginning to feel the pinch.

So in an effort to help, Mr. Ingraham has announced several programmes to assist people that might be negatively impacted.

First there was the demand that the Bahamas Electricity Corporation turn the power back on for clients adversely affected by increased fuel costs this summer.

Then there were increased social service provisions followed by help with electricity bills from the private power plant in Grand Bahama.

Faced with even more bad economic news, Mr. Ingraham has now announced mortgage assistance for those falling on hard times. No details on how this might work have been released yet, but these will no doubt follow.

It makes one wonder:

1. How people that have previously lost their homes when times were not so tough will feel? Their equity is lost until they can get back on their feet. Are they deserving of help too?

2. With the National debt already over $3 billion how does the government intend to fund this new expenditure?

3. What impact will this have on the country's foreign reserves?

4. How will this all impact liquidity - working capital loans etc?

5. Was a cost benefit analysis done on this?

6. How many of these kinds of programmes, like educational loans etc, have ever been successfully repaid?

7. How long will National Insurance, the lone social assurance entity, last in the face of all this? Will the equity of the thousands of Bahamian taxpayers go down the drain in some other effort to help?

8. Where and when will this so called assistance end?

9. Who will decide who is worthy of help and who is not?

The list could go on, and on.

God knows, no one wants to lose their home and the equity they have accumulated after years of making mortgage payments, but is this Socialism of losses the right approach for a government to take?

Why don't we hear Mr. Ingraham and his supporters, or Mr. Christie, leader of the PLP and his supporters, suggesting that these are times that families must come together to help each other?

Why don't they lead the way by donating from their public salaries to start a private fund to help the less fortunate? A fund that will be properly managed, with appropriate safeguards to protect the future prospects of collecting the funds that are loaned out?

It's because they can dip into the Public Treasury at their whim. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, it's always easier to spend other peoples money, and why worry about it when you have nothing to give but what you take from the taxpayers in the first place.

At the end of the day, it all starts with the best of intentions but ends with a country in misery. History is replete with examples. Presumably Mr. Ingraham and the Bahamian Parliament believe they can create a welfare state that is different than those that have existed in the past, with outcomes that will have no impact on future generations.

But we all know, when something seems too good to be true...it is. Just ask the millions of Americans and other citizens of the world suffering the ill effects of another financial bubble that has burst.

It's too bad, but this present crop of so called leaders might not be here to witness the destruction of the Socialist policies they are implementing. Nor will they see or feel the long road to recovery when the country is finally down graded to a basket case.

But at the present clip, maybe that day is not as far off as we hope?

Maybe some economic realism will previal before the country goes any further down this road.