Wealth from top to bottom

The Editor: We in Trinidad and Tobago are reaping the results of a failed development model.  For nearly fifty years our decision makers have convinced us that economic growth will raise the standard of living of all — “The rising tide will raise all boats etc, etc...The increasing wealth will trickle down.”

Certainly there has been economic growth, but the free market has no mechanism to ensure the desirable distribution of income to all sectors of the population.  As in the US, the home of this model of economic development, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have become poorer. In TT, this has led to a serious alienation of large numbers of the population who have resorted to all sorts of methods, legal and illegal, to attain and to maintain their comfortable lifestyle.  The drug trade and non-productive speculation like gambling and opportunistic kidnappings, have attracted many of these marginalised individuals. 

The important stabilising effect of a well-off middle class is being eroded constantly. Programmes to redistribute the national income which reward narrow party loyalty rather than the increased production of essential goods and services are counter-productive in the short and the long term. Rather than looking outwards to foreign consultants and trained personnel in various fields such as health care, education and business enterprise, we should be tapping the wealth of potential human resources that remain unrecognised and ignored. As a result, not hundreds, but thousands of our most gifted are frustrated over lack of opportunities in their native land. As anyone with a passing interest in economic development will attest, abundant natural resources, eg oil and gas etc, are not enough.

Many highly developed countries in Europe for instance are lacking in material resources, but they have concentrated on harnessing their human resources to compensate for that deficiency. In Trinidad and Tobago, we are neglecting our tremendous native human resources to such an extent that we feel helpless and despondent about our capacity to organise our society to provide our basic needs and to create the opportunities for our own economic and social development.  We need to build a new self-confidence as we face the future. Our failure to succeed in small things has undermined our resolve to deal with the larger issues that need to be addressed.

J M Dube
Guayaguayare, Mayaro