Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

In every country, the symbiotic relationship between politics, business, and private interests, creates an opaque behemoth that devours cash that would have been better spent on the social infrastructure. Discussion of the matter can be very hypocritical, especially when conducted by politicians.

Voters and party members in a two party system are exhorted to ensure that those placed in positions of power after elections in early 2016 are men and women of vision and integrity. Yes, that is a difficult demand to make as the political selection processes in both parties limit choice to known entities. However, selecting the best leaders in terms of strength of character is the only way this tiny country can move forward.

OK. This Old Boy has received much complaint from readers he meets on his frequent ambles of Road Town and elsewhere. They warn that he has departed the road of objectivity in his political writing. In other words, he has been accused of partisanship, of bias. His response is this: his personal political affiliations, and friendships, are a private affair.

However, his first loyalty is to his reader, to whom he owes his passion for writing: his customer. He will further promise that he is committed to issues based Political and General Election Commentary. He will be objective with a passion in the run up to 2016.

He will not be sidetracked in his purpose, to present the issues that matter to the Virgin Islands Community as he sees them. He will not sacrifice his personal integrity on the altar of social and political expediency.

Another thing: he will not depart from his belief that what is good for the poor and middle class is good for the country. And he will very confidently state that when the poor and middle class are left behind, the country is worse off.

He will stand by that assertion till a social and economic model can be found that states otherwise.

The most important spending government makes in terms of social and economic growth is spending on an appropriate education model, effective healthcare, and social welfare easily accessible to the most vulnerable. This is spending that develops a country’s human capital: the most valuable resource a country possesses.

He is not stating that any specific political party is pursuing a flawed economic policy. And he is not asserting that any political group is overly keen on the economic cultures of Trickledown and Austerity. The 2016 election is gearing up to become an economic war. And he leaves that economic swordfight to men and women in both political camps much more ideologically capable than himself, of deciding the best economic route for the country.

What he is saying is this however. He is personally certain, after a lot of private reading that economic models that are associated with the cultures of Trickledown and Austerity, do not work for the majority of citizens of a country.

He will add that both cultures are associated with Supply Side economics. Supply Side Economics places business before the consumer, the producer before the customer, and the wealthy before the middle class, in the proverbial “food chain.”

He is ready to assert without equivocation that Supply Side Economics has failed to lead the Western Economy to El Dorado since it became modus Vivendi in the early 1970s after the Oil Shock.

Instead, the Supply Side Model of Economics, in the developed western economies especially, has created unsustainable wealth inequalities, a shrinking middle class, social division, and economic depression.

The economics of the middle class states that what is good for the most vulnerable, and families that have to work to make ends meet, eventually benefits all, rich and poor alike. This middle class model of economic theory is termed Demand Side Economics. It states that demand in an economy is the most important factor in economic growth and social prosperity. It is a model of economics that took the western world through three decades of economic prosperity after World War 2.

Under the Demand Side Prototype, Jack the Consumer is King, and Jill the Customer, is Queen. Demand Side Economics states that policy that lifts up the poor and middle class strengthens the demand for goods and services in an economy.
Consumption by a confident and prosperous middle class, in turn, generates strong economic growth.

To be continued

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