Submitted by People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

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Barbados is presently undergoing its worst period of material production distribution decay since the 1930s. And having recorded its third successive year of material production financial decline in 2010, the country is set to maintain this very ignoble trend for the fourth successive year in 2011 – a very unprecedented happening in this nation’s relatively short history.

From a structuralist ( production exchange ) perspective, this decay is far worse than the crisis period of 1990-1992, which was a most tumultuous time in the country’s de/development. This was a very sordid chapter in the national experience, a time, when there were huge unsustainable deficits both in the government’s fiscal accounts and in the country’s current account of the Balance of Payments, and when there was severe foreign exchange haemorrhagingg taking place in the international reserves of the country ( money issues).

Yes, these events were precipitated by gross and reckless DLP mismanagement of the government’s and the country’s financial affairs in the said late 80s and early 90s, and, too, were accelerated through persistent over-use by BLP/DLP Governments/and by some private sector institutions of many old, tired, failed politico-material production models of national development.

To stave off a worsening crisis, the then DLP Government implemented an IMF-led structural and stabilization program across the public and private sectors of this country – and did do so with tremendous political social and financial dislocation and disruption being brought to the functioning of the business, the household and personal sectors of the country.

These happenings also helped to cause the DLP to rightly lose the government in September 1994. Nevertheless, some evidence of the very worsening decay that is right now afflicting Barbados’s production and distribution affairs is shown in circumstances where in spite of unemployment figures being kept to about 12 % (22% in 1991/2), where in spite of a significant and increasing proportion of net long term foreign direct investment (private) to the tune of BDS $ 571 million as at ending of 2009 ( as opposed to increases in 1991 and 1992 of about BDS $ 96 and $ 57 million respectively; and with net foreign reserves being about BDS $ 1.4 billion as at the first quarter of 2011 ( about 19 weeks worth now, in 1991/2, 2 weeks worth), et al, ( some of this information from the Central Bank of Barbados), the value of much of the national income of this country far exceeds the value of the real output of this country. Indeed, the woefully inadequate performance of the latter variables is bound to help realize lower and lower than desired levels of national production and distribution and investment (per person per productive person) in the long run.

What will continue to logically flow from these and other relevant situations is that as the cost of living, the cost of importing and the cost of doing business continue to skyrocket, income wise, at this juncture, and thereby continue to eat up national income at a quicker rate – and as national out put continue to decline, generally – a greater government and private sector propensity to borrow and rack up more debt will prevail as time goes by – and right up until that time in the future when greater political, social, material desquamation and ruin come about in Barbados – but only if the DLP/BLP remain in government in this country.

But, a careful analysis of what lies at the core of this very staggering decay, does uncover the sickness that like a cancer is emaciating the body of the country, in the sense that the money function – rather than fundamentally solving the middle-aged Europeanized ( the Barter problem of double coincidence of wants ) of far fewer resources and people being utilized across spatial and temporal dimensions – has been helping to aggravate – more than wished for – the said double coincidence of wants problem, and has been helping to create other relevant problems for this banana republic-to-be, and at such a time like now when too many resources and people remain disengaged or underutilized in Barbados to the utter disadvantage of the further growth and development of the Barbadian society.

So, therefore, Barbados is not only undergoing massive decay in its production and distribution structures, but is also undergoing horrendous problems in the operation of the local money system ( the huge government debt/the Clico debacle, etc.), which therefrom are very distinctively intractable, and yet worse than the chronic international currency payments problems that existed in the early 90s. At the root of these said money problems, as opposed to income generating problems a la TAXATION, INTEREST RATES, etc. , is the cardinal issue of price; yes, price and what this concept means overall to many people in Barbados.

Well, for us in the PDC, price is defined as any part of any commercial process whereby a person/persons/entities make exchanges of any amounts/qualities of goods, resources and services that are either owned or possessed by them – and who at the same time, or later, as they do so exchange these commodities – with any other amounts/qualities of any other goods, resources, and services belonging to or in possession of any other persons/entities – do engage in the transferring of ownership or possession in these things from one set of persons/entities to others. The costs of actually producing and distributing these goods and services are the material and energy portions, human or otherwise, used up in these processes. Their real costs are not in money or income terms.

However, for us the definition of price is the only proper and acceptable and legal definition of price. It takes into consideration what actually materially financially takes place between so-called buyers and sellers, in their respective commercial dealings, in the market place. Therefore it is possible or necessary some times to have so many prices in one single commercial transaction. Where ever possible, too, increases or decreases in real prices are measured by the actual number of material or service exchanges taking place – and with out due regard to so-called prices and whether they are increasing or not in respect of these exchanges.

In actual fact when persons give up portions of their income – expressed in money or money value terms – or give up portions of borrowed funds, in exchange for other goods or services, what they are doing essentially is actually paying for the use of the people’s money!!!

However, what has been happening in Barbados and in all other countries over the years is that many millions of people have been creating many unnecessary problems for the one true, philosophic meaning of price, by abusing the term, “price”, by giving it many false meanings. These people have been creating many conceptual problems which have very far-reaching psycho-commercial effects and implications, even for the proper functioning of their respective body politics, their national social cultures, and for all aspects of their national market systems.

Hence, what these persons have been wrongly referring to – as prices – are those psychological subjective digitized values that – since the beginning of trade many eons ago – have been produced and assigned by individuals to commercial goods, resources and services. It is these “prices” that the People’s Democratic Congress (PDC) have long been referring to as so-called prices, to maintain the real distinction between them and true prices.

Of course, these so-called prices have been and are the ones that continue to relate to non-money goods and services – which themselves do not carry any inherent digitized value, and are those ones too that relate to income and money that carry inherent digitized values. For these persons then any changes in these so-called prices – as if upwards or downwards on a digitized number scale – must have significance – very falsely though, in the identical changes being expressed through or reflected in the psychologized subjective value process applicable to such goods and services.

What also happens in these cases too is that the resultant changes coming about in these so-called prices must have been gauged, processed, sensed, etc., through the minds of individuals – mainly so-called buyers and sellers, and have therefore wherever possible been deemed as MOVING based on the changes in the money digit costs of goods, resources and services to the incomes of the relevant people and other entities; and based on any marginal changes in such incomes, incomes earned by them; and based on even human greed and avarice for greater income, money hoardings etc…

But, of course, such a culture of backward unprogressive thinking (idiomatic idiocy suffused with metaphor ) goes against all the scientific proof available in any regions where there are commercial business markets. The facts are that no two, three or any number of so-called buyers and sellers, produce and distribute and exchange the
AME goods, resources, services, etc., in the SAME transactions, at the SAME time, and so hence there is really NO SUCH thing as such as prices GOING UP OR DOWN (since there are one and only one set of real prices that are being exchanged for another/others).

Also, the scientific evidence will show that in any market there is clearly no inverse or proportional relationship between, on one hand, what is said by some to be gained or lost in income terms, and on the other hand, what is said by some to be gained or lost in income terms, at any stages as a result of the conducting of these commercial transactions.

Furthermore, given that governments in Barbados have been talking about INFLATION/DEFLATION – stupid myths – and that governments have been restricting the money supply or expanding it to control some thing that clearly does not exist ( INFLATION/DEFLATION), it must mean that, at what ever prescribed times, the rate of earning or losing an amount of income per person or business, and the rate of accumulating or losing an amount of assets/savings per individuals and other entities, must be based on the amount of money income spent or borrowed whenever, and must therefore be seen by many persons as the most acceptable measures of REAL INCREASES OR DECREASES in REAL PRICES ( the number of actual exchanges), in furthermore in evaluating whether or not the cost of living or doing business or importing goods and services is numerically increasing or decreasing for any particular individuals in any given periods (NOT THROUGH ANY BOGUS PRICE INDICES).

It is these trends or changes in income earnings/losses/savings/dis-savings/asset buildings/reductions/that actually measure the capacity or quality of a person to live – to survive – to develop ( OR NOT) relative to previous occasions. For example, the rate that a person earns X income ( per month) helps to determine whether that person is earning enough of it in the long term, to say, cover the cost of doing business re another business. A similar situation obtains with regard to a household, a business, a nation of people etc…

Hence, given that so-called prices have no real property value – they are mere digits – it must mean that the real market power, authority, legitimacy ( atomized/generalized, underpinning and presuming such a VALUE must directly relate to the human political legal capacity, or lack thereof, of individuals, households, businesses, etc., to transact local and international business, investment, commercial and social relationships with one another, and to exchange property or services in helping to do so.

To establish financial and pricing capacity mechanisms and their orderly effective functioning in a country like Barbados are therefore of secondary importance. So, the fact that Barbados – a very small import dependent post-colonial society – has so soon reached this very unsatisfactory state of decay in its production and distribution structures and processes, and which has come about mainly through the fault of internal dynamics and euro-centrism, after just 44 years of political independence, says a lot about at least these 4 things:

1. That BLP and DLP Governments through the implementation of long abjectly failed bankrupt Westernized Euro-centricized monetary policies – esp. and which has been done with the main view of controlling the money supply and with the central objective of so-called stabilizing the value of the domestic dollar cost component of domestic business transactions- have been thoroughly undermining the capacity of citizens and businesses to earn income, invest, save, corporate responsibility etc. in the country and beyond.
2. That given that many political corporate financial elites and BLP/DLP Governments can in no way totally control the psychological subjective digitized value applications of the average person, the average business in this country, means they have sought to and have been using money (policy wise) as an expression of, and as a juxtaposition to, such value applications, in order to exercise a great degree of control over the pricing processes in Barbados a la making it seems as if money equal are prices.
3. That given that so-called prices continue to be falsely misrepresented, they do demonstrate that they are not a proper signal of resources and goods and human being allocated efficiently properly in the market place – and esp. given the numerous distortions ( TAXATION, INTEREST RATES, HIRE PURCHASE, ETC.) to the setting of fair and proper real prices.
4. The vast majority of the masses and middle classes still think sociologically that real pricing is essentially the power arena of the corporate business elites and a few others to determine, rather than they thinking that pricing is the result of property and market capacity rights.

Finally, as a significant response to placing Barbados on a developmentalist trajectory for the achievement of better and brighter things to come for the people of this country, and as a way forward towards salvaging the country from this period of long decay – the period of the lost decades in Barbados ( will be going on for the next ten to fifteen years) – and from eventual ruin under BLP/DLP governmental mismanagement and incompetence, a future PDC Government shall do at least these four things:

1. Reduction in the cost of use of money/value borrowed from financial institutions in the country via the Abolition of Interest Rates and Repayable Productive Loans.
2. Increase in the circulation of money through out the country, esp. for productive purposes.
3. The zero-“pricing ” of goods and services at all points of entry into the country.
4. The promoting of a healthy and more prosperous competitive commercial business environment in Barbados.

So, there you go.