And I am very familiar with the spending levels of the early 21st Century. My father was Minister of Finance then. He was firmly of the view that expenditure was (and still is) far too low for our development needs and that what made deficits chronic and inevitable in the Bahamian context was that the tax base was too narrow and inflexible. In other words, we need to grow up, stop making the poor pay for the rich and introduce progressive taxes on income and property!

In 2020, Singapore's expenditure to GDP was 28.46 percent. Of course it is (like the Bahamas') one of the lowest in the world generally, but as the 2020 figure demonstrates, it is (unlike the bahamas) sufficiently flexible to withstand slowdowns, largely because (unlike the bahamas) it has a progressive tax regime, featuring income tax. Unlike the Bahamas, Singapore does not make its poor pay for its rich by exempting income tax and replacing it with taxes on consumption.

So your research has either been very superficial or intentionally ignored all the things that make my point for me. While you had to look far and wide to find a handful of countries with similarly low expenditure (and didn't you say earlier that we have HIGH expenditure??), your examples are glaringly different from us in that Singapore and Hong Kong DO HAVE progressive income taxes, while Cayman is a microstate where financial services make up 60 percent of revenue and jobs.

And you still did not explain your factually ignorant statement that government spending in the Bahamas is high, since you are now comparing it to the very lowest spenders on earth. Do you see no incongruity there? Since it is less than half the spending of the USA or even Barbados, does it make these places communist? Or rather, the global norm....

As for your reference to the Vanguard, I guess that makes some sense to you, but it does not explain the fact that my recommendations would bring the Bahamas in line with the virtually the whole world, us being drastically to the right of the USA on taxation. I guess Trump is a socialist too in your absurd and ignorant world.

VAT "breadbasket" exemptions are pure nonsense. You seem to share Minnis' total lack of understanding of how VAT works. If there is an "exemption", it is meaningless, since the tax is ubiquitous and will be paid elsewhere in the same ecosystem and affecting hardest the same people - those who consume the most. I.E. the poor.

As for your assertion that we have had "irresponsible spending", can you back that up with one iota of evidence, data, statistic etc? Of course you cannot, because it is pure fiction. We have not spent too much, we have collected too little. Both cause the same outcome (yes, bankruptcy) but in our case it is clearly the case of insufficient revenues rather than overspending.

Here are the simple facts: -

1. The Bahamas collects about 17% of its GDP in revenues and spends about 18%. This is about the lowest level of spending/revenues relative to GDP on the planet. Are you aware of this? If you disagree, kindly cite me another country that spends less on its citizenry as a proportion of GDP.

2. The global average of revenues / spending to GDP is about 40%, with all of our regional counterparts being above 30% and the USA (that socialist paradise!) being between 38% and 43% every year since 1990. European countries are above 50%. Again, we are at 17%!!!!!

3. Our tax base is so low because we exempt wealthy locals from progressive (income) taxes that every other independent country apart from oil exporters levies. Our decision to do so makes no sense since it does nothing to benefit the economy, since the sacred 'foreign investors' that are always cited would not pay a local income tax anyway, since they are taxed on income in their home countries. (read my letter coming out on Monday for more on this).

4. The government that raises VAT will be gone and they deserve it. VAT is regressive and should be replaced with taxes on income and a MUCH stronger and higher rated Real Property Tax on properties owned by foreigners (which again, contrary to ignorant myth, does almost nothing for our economy).

It is amazing how much ignorance is out there about basic, easily verified facts. And this country is suffering for it.

This man is a verifiable twit

Actually, it made the world news a few years ago that the real sinister and evil party that has infiltrated 100% of Bahamian telephony (by fooling Hubert Ingraham into letting them splice into our subsea network at their Andros base) is in fact the US government - i.e. the same entity that has you brainwashed into believing that China is some kind of threat. You obviously didn't see that news - or maybe had it brainwashed out via good old fashioned anti-Chinese racism.

"..........FNM Bahamian government is just not capable of this." There! Fixed it for you.

Yes, exactly. Everyone knows that a country with zero taxes on wealth and income and high taxes on consumption is a recipe for high growth and equitability too....which is why it is done in so many successful countries like ...um...ahhh....thingumajig and whatchamacallit and......whatsitsname! Yep

Yes of course. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher will be our official mascots, seeing as they both advocated a tax system that even had a pretense of progressivism and neither ever veered into the nutty rightwing fringes of this country's regressive tax and wage policies.

Then again, I am sure you are au fair with all the events out there in the real world over the last 50 years and not just repeating some regurgitated, lazy and ignorant thought-memes that are shaken to mind anytime anyone discusses anything requiring too much thought.

Very intelligent response!

I especially like the way you actually countered all of my points demonstrating a pattern of distraction with unproven sleaze followed by real world actions on behalf of vested interests once the FNM gets into power.

Keep up the critical thinking!

Just how can you be so unintelligent??? Honestly.
Bahamians (the loose, partying set you decry) had beaten this virus down to FOUR active cases, before the Moron administration decided to open the borders to the epicentre of the virus in Florida. Yet it's the people's fault????