show me one contractor working on that small of margin, more like 40% markup in the construction industry.

One reason to keep these salaries low is that it makes these positions unattractive to those who are not already rich.

It's used as a way to keep common people "out of the club", if the salary was 100k, then you run the risk of attracting people with education and high moral capacity , but who are not rich.
Get too many people like that in office and they might interfere with the "gang of thieves".

you do realize that a balanced budget is far from debt free We will be in debt forever! Notice that debt is always discussed as a percentage of GDP, not so much in amount of debt, this is because it's never an intention to pay it off, but rather to manage the debt level at the "appropriate" percentage of gdp.
And no, the shackles will never be removed. Instead of chains, you be a debt slave, and will always be.

this country isn't worth worrying about! One of the very smallest in the world, with about 70 years left before we're underwater........

This would all be sad, if we were not such a joke

businesses don't pay vat, not net anyway. Sure they pay out for vat on electricity and lease etc but they get all that back via VAT received on goods they produce / sell etc.

there is no squeeze on business directly. What they pay out in vat they get back.
The only problem for business is that if you happen to cater to the poor, well the poor won't buy as much when they factor in the additional vat.
However if you cater to the rich, well this additional 4.5% won't mean a damn thing, and won't harm ur business.

idiotic article, the US leaders are chosen during the primary's , a system that allows approx. 1/2% of American's (coincidentally the ones with money) to decide who gets to run.

Then the people get to pick the leader who will diddle your a## for the next few years.

Of course your aided in your choice by media (again owned by the rich) and given some good debates (dog and pony show) with rigged questions to help you the "people" make the choice.

The only democracy that sort of works is the Swiss Direct Democracy, at least all major issues are put to a referendum. Though the flaw is that the people are typically not too interested in participating for most referendums.....

Yah great, read about how it's working for Germany.....

http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-envir…

https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/opinions…

you obviously forget where you are, we are a nation of beings not much better than animals, and in some cases not even a good.
Talk face to face with a politician, but be careful, usually theyre stuffing their face and spraying food all over your conversation.

There is no hope. Lest we get a Cat 5 hurricane to wipe away 80 percent of the problem

How can you be surprised at the comments; the first step to improvement is to admit the problem. Our people are mostly lazy, entitled and have horrible attitudes and do not , I repeat do not think, unless it's to figure out how to scam.
Were literally beholden to other governments / institutions ie. IMF, China etc etc as our "leaders" have borrowed us into unsustainable debt. While there is no evidence that leaders of any sort are the "best & brightest", it is quite obvious that leaders have the ability to garner support from the people; so the people we have chosen and voted to lead us, are a reflect of our own stupidity. We've not had a leader who was worthy of anything since independence.
Look around, we don't really have anything to be proud of. I challenge you to list some accomplishments that we can say as Bahamians "we did this". Just give me one thing for us to be proud of????