Polack Post: Caribbean Guaranteed Employment
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
From the time slavery in the Caribbean was over, the overwhelming matter of employment has become a see saw of minimum wage and dry statistics that do not reflect the human tragedy that lies beneath it all. As we have moved from the plantation to the post colonial patriarchy, we finally landed on some form of worker’s rights, unsatisfactory to both employer and employee.
There is only the residue of the unanswered question: whither goest thou?
At one end of the spectrum is the Universal Basic Wage of Finland that provided a basic payment to a test group without employment, which is unresolved in that outcome. Then there is the old Indian protection of minimum annual hours for some agricultural workers that is on the cusp of revision.
There is also the hybrid method most recently adopted by the indecisive head of the Cayman Islands that invokes the bloated bureaucracy of imaginary job self deception, namely financial oversight, while the Cayman name is dragged through the mud in yacht seizures and Ponzi schemes.
The entire Cayman Islands financial industry teeters on the recent announcement of a worldwide corporate flat tax rate, designed to destroy every Caribbean tax haven.
The simple indigestible fact is that the greatest part of the unemployment enigma are young people who also just happenstance to be the main driver of criminal activity by the disenfranchised. Someday, somewhere, someone, will connect the dots.
The worst part in the Caribbean is that increased efficiency, AI, government revenue measures and social spending demands are driving up the unemployment rate with the sector referred to as salary men by the Japanese, the older demographic, who can no longer depend on a job for life. Still, we are not yet at the Argentine model that would see minimal government pensions in jeopardy.
The over reliance on the old chestnuts: tourism, a few remaining minerals, tax havens and remittances have left the voters with a barren future. One Caribbean island is even trying to develop military assistance as a new part of their economy, just like the Philippines. Good luck with that.
Worse, some, once independent Caribbean countries, are to become hosts and prison wardens on behalf of the USA. Shame has no limit in the new world order of authority by exercise of military and diplomatic power.
The dependence on remittances are in danger from the American tax and the Caribbean outsourcing sector is also under attack by the US government.
So what now?
In 2026 the Caribbean leadership will come up with the answers on diversification of the economy and sovereign funds for those who can afford it.
Otherwise the future is more misery and more press releases
Otherwise it will be spin for every man, woman and child.
The ball is in their court.
Notes
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1lr980vvjpo
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15396595/Investment-manager-used-proceeds-107m-fraud.html
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
