Lat­est news is that the Prime Min­is­ter on in­vi­ta­tion again, may pos­si­bly be head­ing to Chi­na. The PM's trip to In­dia and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er ex­ter­nal vis­it to Chi­na is the un­for­tu­nate end re­sult of King Louis IV tax­a­tion dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s where cit­i­zens suf­fered painful tax abuse with per­son­al tax rates as high as 70 per cent and cor­po­ra­tions 45 per cent that stymied eco­nom­ic growth from the small man. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, these un­fair and per­ni­cious tax­es were not utilised to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and growth as ought to have been the case but in­stead to sup­port un­jus­ti­fi­able state em­ploy­ment and vast mon­ey-los­ing state en­ter­pris­es as well as har­bor oth­er un­pro­duc­tive em­ploy­ment, such as DEWD and so on. To­day, as King Louis IV of France even­tu­al­ly re­alised, our for­mer years of bur­den­some and un­rea­son­able tax­a­tion was an eco­nom­ic tragedy en­cour­aged by ir­rel­e­vant po­lit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and mis­man­age­ment.

Point Lisas, es­sen­tial­ly, saved the coun­try from ab­ject pover­ty and eco­nom­ic ru­in. To­day, oil and gas still con­tin­ue to be the coun­try's tem­po­rary sal­va­tion. How­ev­er, there is a huge neg­a­tive em­a­nat­ing from the oil and gas dol­lar, that is, that very few per­sons ap­pre­ci­ate the re­al val­ue of en­tre­pre­neur­ship for the ad­vance­ment of our coun­try. The na­tion is lazy in at­ti­tude to­wards en­tre­pre­neur­ship, al­so in­no­va­tion and cit­i­zens seem hell bent to be com­fort­able be­hind desks as their in­come source. Truth­ful­ly, this coun­try has been liv­ing a lie for decades when oth­ers in Chi­na and In­dia were work­ing 7/24 and build­ing a re­al­is­tic sound eco­nom­ic base there by use of the hand and five fin­gers. Due to es­tab­lished na­tion­al aver­sion to­wards in­vest­ment in pro­duc­tive en­tre­pre­neur­ship-bars and im­port busi­ness seems to be the na­tion­al pref­er­ence-tens of bil­lions of sav­ings are now be­ing tied up in idle ca­pac­i­ty and now de­pre­ci­at­ing due to in­fla­tion.

The cri­sis has now cometh and the PM has to now seek for­eign in­volve­ment to pro­mote a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic thrust since cit­i­zens seem very un­will­ing to in­vest while pre­fer­ring a slow fi­nan­cial death of their sav­ings re­al val­ue. Us­ing agri­cul­ture as an ex­am­ple, the bud­get does not in­clude specifics such as a pur­pose­ful plan to award sub­stan­tive agri­cul­tur­al land to will­ing en­tre­pre­neurs for the grow­ing of se­lect­ed ex­ot­ic crops, such as julie man­go, gua­va, tamarind and so on. The bud­get does not even in­vite en­tre­pre­neurs to en­join with the State in de­vel­op­ing a long-range can­ning in­dus­try to pro­mote the in­ter­na­tion­al sale of these won­der­ful prod­ucts, say, in five years. No mat­ter how well mean­ing the PM's trips are, Chi­na and In­dia will not be in­ter­est­ed in any­thing else be­sides con­sum­ing our mas­sive en­er­gy re­sources. Even­tu­al­ly, it will come to naught as there is no op­por­tu­ni­ty for Chi­na and In­dia to in­vest in high em­ploy­ment mi­cro busi­ness in this coun­try when our labour rates are more than ten times that abroad.

When the mon­ey sup­ply be­comes tighter be­cause of lim­it­ed labour price in­creas­es, then the de­crease of "de­mand" will in­form "sup­ply" to drop its prices-the re­sul­tant ef­fect be­ing that the whole econ­o­my will ad­just down­wards and be­come com­pet­i­tive for the first time in 56 years. Then a des­per­ate PM will not have to go any­where to find an eco­nom­ic so­lu­tion that has no long-term mer­it. The fu­ture is re­al­ly us: not Chi­na and In­dia.

PS Moralles

Cas­cade