Notes From a Native Son: The Poverty of Ideas is Worse than Material Poverty

Hal Austin

Hal Austin

Introduction:
One of the embarrassing things about the scramble for new policies to rescue the national economy is the paucity of ideas coming from the self-selected band of politicians and career civil servants. If nothing else, this alone is a reflection of the shortcomings in the framework of our education by rote, and of the building of intellectual barriers between party-affiliated thinkers, policymakers and unsure academics. It also reflects a stubbornness on the part of those in power which is in many ways a core part of popular Barbadian culture, something that the objectivity of a liberal education should have erased. In fact, on a wider note, this has been the promise of the Enlightenment – scientific truth, objectivity, impartiality, etc – which Northern European post-mercantilist culture has been preaching since the 17th century and continues, to this day, even if with less vigour.

Class Politics:
Enlightenment values had a hole right at the centre of its beliefs, and that was filled in during the mid-19th century by Karl Marx in his long analysis of the battle between labour and capital. But, if the great dividing line in Europe, and in particular Britain, was between the mill owners and the chimney boys, to those of us who came of age during the black power movement of the 1960 and the post 9/11 Muslims, who see religion as more important than class, not only was the sc9ientism of the Enlightenment wrong, so too was the post-Darwinism of Marxism. Some social attachments are more powerful than class or religion, a reality that may be more expressive in some societies than in others.

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Notes From a Native Son: Why a Massive Development Plan could Have Made a Major Difference to Development in Barbados (Pt 1)

Hal Austin

Introduction:
For the last five years governments of Barbados have been trapped like a rabbit in oncoming headlights as to what to do about the cascading economic crisis that has descended on the island and the simmering social breakdown that no one wants to talk about. Many prefer to close their eyes and pretend that global problems beyond local control are the reasons, so all they have to do is sit back and wait and things will magically change.

However, no where has there been a substantive strategic plan, no strategy to rebalance public sector spending, no plan for growth, apart from the rhetoric, and nothing at all to deal with the threat to social order. Nowhere in the many speeches and rebuttals of his critics has finance minister Chris Sinckler talked about the much-needed fiscal discipline, reducing public sector borrowing or spending. He has mentioned growth, but it is all smoke and mirrors, rhetoric without any follow through action.

Here I want to outline some simple policy actions or announcements the DLP government should have taken within the first 100 days of coming to power, and, to my mind, the mistakes it has made. The nearest the government has come to publishing an expressed policy was its “Barbados Short and Medium Term Action Plan” of December 2008. Lots have happened in the last four years, and, apart from the occasional reference to it, that document has not been updated.

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