I live here in Grand Bahama and Oban is the stupidest idea put forth in years. It is a land grab dressed up as a 'project' as you will soon learn.

I wonder if they were able to remove the foot out of his mouth of fill the gap in his cranium.

So struggling ex-students are thieving the state's resources? What about the wealthy corporations and individuals who pay no income tax and sit around complaining? Your moniker should be "bonehead"

It comes from ignorant morons (most of whom have little and produce even less) but are brainwashed by right-wing ultra-capitalists who in turn benefit from a country that taxes the poor instead of the rich and claims to have zero responsibility to spend the contents of the consolidated fund on the people (mostly the poor and middle classes) who overwhelmingly fund it.

So the money that goes to build schools, police stations, hospitals and pay those who occupy them comes from outer space, then? I thought it came from the taxes paid by the same Bahamian people who you now claim must be socialists. Ignorance is killing us, my friend.

You are laughably uninformed. What's more your comment (that others do more with what they have) demonstrates the widespread general ignorance that is spread around this country by rightwing nutcases in the media.

With the meagre 18 percent that we collect, the UN last year ranked The Bahamas (at 8.07) is the most developed majority black country in the history of the world, in terms of human development and living standards. It is not just ranked as "high human development", but, with Barbados alone in the region (2nd) as "very high human development". And that was achieved with 18%!!!!

But you make my argument when you say that it is not nearly enough and that we can do even better if we increased our intake. But even more benefit would come if we depended more on progressive, rather than regressive taxes.

Our problem in this country is that ignorance of social and economic issues is so pervasive that governments are not even subject to the corrective threat of the failure of their bad policies. An idiotic and indefensible action like raising taxes on consumption (thus reducing aggregate demand) can be dressed up as "fiscal discipline" because so many of our people are so bloody ignorant.

Fiscal discipline means not only minimizing bad spending but maximizing revenues. It also means getting revenues from where they do the least harm (like from reasonable corporate income taxes, rather than the meager income of the consuming poor). Instead, we have a government that extends to the wealthy a tax paradise (whose economic rationale has long died, with the offshore sector) and pummels the consumer on every occasion, then calls that "discipline".

say what?? Did you read my commentary or are you just saying something to say something?

Here are the facts:

1.we collect a mere 18 percent of GDP in revenues. The average in our region is 35 percent, in the USA 40% and Europe 50 plus percent.

2. The vast majority of what we collect is in consumption taxes (meaning taxes that hit the poor and middle class the most). This, again, is the reverse of anywhere else sane on earth.

3. Instead of taxing (even extremely lightly ) taxes on income, personal or corporate, we continue to tax the disposable income of those who spend most in supporting the wider economy. Then we turn around and wonder why we have such an inequitable society and are unable to transform FDI (of which we get bundles) into sustainable economic growth.

Now come again.....

That's it: blame the poor. No hint in all this that maybe, just MAYBE a 12 percent tax on consumption (which hits the poorest hardest) and a tax system that lets the rich off scot free may be to blame for people's pattern of delinquency, eh?

Will address this point by point:

Q: How do I know that hundreds of millions of dollars are uncollected?

A: Because I am a real estate attorney who deals with it every day. You simply have to visit RPT and ask for their files. It is public information that hundreds of millions remain unpaid. Take, example, the Darby Islands, in Exuma Cays. Presently over $5 million is owing. In Bakers' Bay, collectively more than $80 million and throughout the Bahamas many hundreds of millions more.

As for waiting for it to be transferred and deducting it then, I am aware of this as I deal with conveyances every day. But since it means waiting until a buyer is found, it inevitably causes the seller to jack up the price. Which is precisely why so many properties carrying heavy RPT loads are unsold and the government is owed the hundreds of millions that I mentioned above and that it will not collect it in a thousand years of Sundays.

While there is (arguably) finally a legislative means to take and resell property, it has never once been used to my knowledge (which is obviously considerably more extensive than yours).

Stay in your lane, because you have no clue of this matter.

As for the clearing banks, I do not THINK they are raking in profits. I KNOW they are raking in profits. My father was chairman of one and my uncle chairman of another for many years. Furthermore, I have the ability to read. Try it some time and pick up the annual financials of Scotiabank, RBC and FC. They all make obscene profits in our region and the biggest single chunk comes from the Bahamas. They deserve the delinquency, which they idiotically racked up pursuing unsustainable credit in the era of ponzi-scheme 'sub prime' lending, much as their counterparts did in the states. But although this has hit them, it was not enough to offset the insane money they still make on consumer loans in the Bahamas (cars etc.).

They reason they are scaling back is because by using technology to their one-sided advantage (without giving consumers any matching benefits, like online and mobile apps that actually work) they have found a scam to reduce employment costs and stretch profits even further.

Now, back to my original point: in which economics class did you learn that lumping taxes on consumers, reducing their disposable income and simultaneously exempting corporations from taxes on wealth and income helps anyone but parasitic quacks like Mr. Myers?