Bahamas on the road to becoming a Socialist welfare state?

by Christopher D. Lowe

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

This quote was wrongly attributed to Alexander Tyler, history professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, 1787 but it so describes my trend of thought these days and I agree with its premise. I believe it to be prophetic.

I cannot give my silent consent, tacit approval or my willing complicity to any scheme which purports to assist some, at the expense of others, under the guise of government enforced and mandated charity.

The reward for non productivity is reprehensible and can only encourage a welfare state, which admittedly while very appealing to the benevolent dictator in terms of creating dependents of the state and therefore worship of personality, will undermine the very structures of the state, structures erected for the benefit and protection of the people, a productive people.

There is and has been a singular unwillingness of government administrations to acknowledge the fact that anything it does for or gives to, is funded by the people, and more specifically, certain groups of people are singled out for the burden, and others singled out for the benefits.

How long will those singled out for the burden remain in existence, and how can the ever increasing expectations of the ever increasing numbers of those benefitting be sustained?

The words “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” should terrify us all.

But it doesn’t seem to. Why?

Is it that we have been so thoroughly gutted as a people that we are willing to give up any hope of initiative or accomplishment at an individual level in exchange for a protection promised that cannot possibly be delivered?

I am not particularly against National Insurance as it has existed so far, but I am exceedingly against the apparent ability of some to avoid contributing into it, and am against the practice of contributed funds being invested in government buildings and infrastructure, and the thought that it has been so mismanaged that it will not be in existence for much longer unless they purloin more revenue from me.

Pilferage or pillage, when government is involved in both no good can come of it.