This report out of the Virgin Islands identifies Barbados, Bermuda and The Bahamas in the top 5 most expensive countries to live in the WORLD. Allow the blogmaster to ask a silly question, is this reality reversible?
Barbados One of the Most Expensive Countries to Live in the Region
215 responses to “Barbados One of the Most Expensive Countries to Live in the Region”
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Caribbean stalemate
THE CURRENT DIRECTION of the Caribbean in terms of economic development, democratic advancement, and global positioning suggests that the region is now trapped in (self)imposed considerations of “survival”.
This has facilitated a general “conservatism” cloaked in the language of “this is the best that we can do”. This has poisoned the public consciousness leading to a condition of broad developmental stalemate where the people acquiescingly accept that “nothing is happening”.
For decades, the blame has been placed on external circumstances, fueling the ideological reflex of Caribbean conservativism: 1990 European single economy; 2000 World Trade Organisation; 2001 9/11; 2008 global financial crisis; 2016 Brexit; 2019-21 COVID-19; and now Russia-Ukraine war. To this can be added the broad issue of “climate change”.
This entrapment to global transformations has created an ideal wicket for conservatives, political opportunists, and the economic elite who have always been opposed to broad issues of economic democratisation and social transformation.
These realities have turned Caribbean elections into dull, empty, soulless and spiritless exercises, since despite the size of the mandates or the pretty poetry of the campaigns, the months after usher
in the repeated, practiced litany of external excuses for inaction.
We can recall the “grand charge” and the highsounding claims with which Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley justified the 2022 election, nearly two years early, on the basis that there was a massive transformation agenda which required stronger consensus beyond the 30-0 parliament that she already possessed.
What has emerged since, if not trite discussions about the threat to the National Insurance Scheme, the extension of the retirement age in the civil service, the need for pension reform, and similar mundane tittle tattle?
Amidst all this, many of the big issues which have historically propelled Caribbean development towards greater levels of economic participation, democratisation, social transformation, and sovereign consolidation have been allowed to flounder.
There is little discussion on these issues, except for the saving grace of Barbadian republicanism, but even this, along with token noises on Pan-Africanism, serves as window dressing to deflect from the broad ideological capitulation to external constraints.
Despite the ideological comfort with being “overwhelmed by global forces”, there is still much room for forward movement if only a progressive leadership emerges with the conviction to advance a transformation agenda.
For example, the Organisation
of Eastern Caribbean States (or the Windwards) can move beyond the currently-existing single economy and free movement and place political unification on the agenda. Instead, shamefully, overwhelmed by global forces, we destroyed our regional transportation infrastructure associated with LIAT and are now scrambling to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
Today, there is no leader today whose agenda is consistent with the long-term future qualitative transformation of the Caribbean. While “bare bones” republicanism now provides the new mantra, the broader Caribbean story can be summed up as “we need to survive”.
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Indeed!Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specialising in regional affairs.
Source: Nation
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“There is little discussion on these issues, except for the saving grace of Barbadian republicanism, but even this, along with token noises on Pan-Africanism, serves as window dressing to deflect from the broad ideological capitulation to external constraints.”
that’s the best FRAUDS CAN DO..
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“THE 2 X 3 ISLAND STILL IN 2022 HAS MANY NEGATIVE STIGMAS SUCH AS WHERE PEOPLE LIVE, WHAT SECONDARY SCHOOL THEY WENT TO, WHETHER POLYTECHNIC, BCC ETC IT IS A SIGN OF BACKWARD THINKING TO TAR EVERYONE WITH THE SAME BRUSH BECAUSE OF DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES.
THE REAL CRAB IN THE BARREL MENTALITY.
SAD FOR BLACK PEOPLE.”
they don’t see it as that though, they see APPALLING IGNORANCE as being the best educated…..which makes them the better schooled slaves in reality…..but they can’t see that either…and if that circle is not BROKEN they will continue fighting down each other FOR ANOTHER 4 GENERATIONS…
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Prime Minister Mia Mottley wants to see Speightstown become the centre of arts and heritage in the region.
https://barbadostoday.bb/2022/08/25/mottley-has-vision-for-speightstown-as-regional-arts-centre/
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David
Tennyson Joseph seems to be saying what the radicals here have long argued for, in the main.
Those arguments are rooted within the idea that all of these systems have entered a culdesac and can go no further.
He has also struct the death knell to your anachronistic notions about sovereignty, democracy and imperial dependency while castigating the regime as the straw man it has been.
Absent calling in the undertakers to plane its coffin board, Joseph paints the establishment into an ideological corner from where there shall be no escaping.
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@ Hants, I love Speightstown and go there when ever I visit. What Mia and those before her should have done years ago, was to refurbish and maintain the old historic buildings that are now in decay. Sad to see. Every other country preserves its history.
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@Pacha
You are aware from history everything is cyclical.
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David
That is the general tendency, for sure. However, the literature is also replete with significant and even unique deviations which make your over-simplication inadmissible. We are the ones making the history. Certainly, you’d not argue that imagination has out limits, would you?
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@Pacha
Time will tell. This is the challenge with history in the making. That said your last point is taken.
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Pacha…we can only WITNESS and WRITE….
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THE REAL PROBLEM IS THAT BLACK POLITICIANS CARIBBEAN WIDE HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF THE BLACK MASSES AS IDIOTS AND PAWNS TO BE MADE EMPTY PROMISES FOR THE MOST PART ENRICHING THEMSELVES AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE OVER 5 YEARS OF EACH ELECTION CYCLE. .
SO PEOPLE CAN TALK ALL THEY WANT ABOUT PROGRESS/DEVELOPMENT ALL OTHER IS PR AND FLUFF.
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@ David August 25, 2022 4:56 AM
The article is full of lies:
It is not our government’s fault that our population refuses the Covid19 vaccination and instead prefers to wear smelly masks through which tourists can hardly understand the Creole gibberish. Our honourable government unfortunately presides over an indigenous population that is totally backward. Only the masses bear full responsibility for this, not our honourable government, which is working day and night against the Caribbean sleaziness.
I therefore fully support our Supreme Leader’s plan to settle 80000 new Barbadians on our island. Preferably in exchange for 8,000 of the old residents.
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William Skinner still dropping remarks, I see.
And still answering arguments nobody ever made.
It would be hilarious, if we were not attempting to have rational conversations.
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@Bush Tea August 24, 2022 7:34 AM “Simple Simon. No doubt you also wipe with a rock.”
The oncologist checked last week and there is no colo-rectal cancer, no piles, nothing so. My nether ends are in perfect health.
I am guessing that the rocks did no harm.
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@Tron August 26, 2022 11:48 PM “… Creole gibberish.”
What is creole gibberish?
The only place in the world where I was unable to understand spoken English was in its homeland, England, specifically Birmingham.
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