Poor people are happy with ‘selfies’ while the rich cart off the economic pie

Jul 16, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – During his press conference last week, the President said that he loved being around people. He intimated that he felt comfortable being around people.

When you are President, there are no shortages of persons who want to be around you. Rich and poor, they swarm the President and they too like to be seen round the President. The poor get their ‘selifies’, momentos to place on Facebook and show off to their friends that they met the President but the rich get the profits from the economy.

The President spoke glowing words at the funeral of the late Ashton Chase. But if there is anything that he can take away from the time that Ashton Chase spent in the bosom of the PPP – which was not a very long time – was the working-class nature of the policies of the then PPP policies.

Words of commendation are not enough. The greatest tribute that the President can pay to someone like Chase is to develop a working-class manifesto – one that is splintered from the general neo-liberal ideology which has so captured the imagination of the PPP over the past 30 years.

The philosophy which has become the hallmark of Jagdeo’s economy has been to the effect that governments should invest in infrastructure and social services. The benefits of this investment it is said will filter down to the poor because the poor will get education and better health, housing, and education. That approach has never worked. It has led to only one outcome: increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.

Neo-liberal economics emphasizes investment claiming that this investment will create jobs for the poor. Given the level of private sector investment in Guyana over the past 30 years, unemployment should have been wiped out. The poor do get jobs but at what wages since neo-liberal economics favours keeping wages low so as to make production more competitive.

Neo-liberal economics in developing countries has a track record of worsening inequality. Wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few while the gap between the rich and poor becomes wider and the rich use their vast wealth to corner a great share of the economic pie.

When governments consort with the bourgeois class – as the PPP/C is so fond of doing – the rich use that access to extract concessions for themselves at the expense of the poor. A recent report on social media suggested that there is a shortage of chicken in the country caused by the outbreak of viral infection among local meat birds. As such, it was said that the government is now allowing the importation of chicken from Brazil.

But this is where the situation becomes interesting. The chicken is being imported at a cost of G$285 per lb., far lower than the price at which local chicken is sold. But instead of consumers benefitting from this lower cost, the government will be selling the cheap imported chicken to chicken farmers who will then resell it to consumers, obviously at a huge profit.

If this report in the media is true, then it shows the pro-rich nature of the policies of the PPP government. Instead of allowing the poor to directly benefit from low-cost imported chicken, the rich are being allowed to cream off the profits by buying cheap from the government and reselling at a profit to consumers. And to date, no one has raised ire about this report.

The President needs to change his economic approach. But he cannot do this if he continues to consort with elements of the bourgeois class to the extent of even having elements of this class being part of his government.

The more the government comes under the influence of the bourgeois class, the worse off will become the working class. The government will continue to provide crumbs to the poor –such as cash grants and higher pensions– while the tax system and its policies continue to be geared towards enriching the rich.

The One Guyana that is being established will be an unequal Guyana, a highly unequal Guyana. The rich will get richer and the gap between the rich and the poor will widen.

The trade unions have lost their sting. They also have become stuck in the mode of demanding the government to increase wages and increase the income tax threshold. What is needed instead is a blueprint of working-class policies.

But that is not going to happen if the President continues to surround himself with ‘yes’ persons and those who are afraid to challenge the neo-liberal orthodoxy which was introduced under Bharrat Jagedeo’s presidency.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• ‘selifies’, Facebook, momentos, Peeping Tom, Week

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