It confirms the fundamental gist of my argument that all of you can find fault only with the narrow issue of whether the profits rise of AML foods reflects insurance payout. Maybe (in part) it did. Does that negate my comments in any way. How pedantic.

Does the FNM not do the bidding of the narrow Bay Street and mercantile interests that fund it? Did it not sell your port to a few families and then grant them a monopoly within 20 miles? Did it not give Brent your post office? Did it not bow to Lyford Cay and refuse to remove a cap on RPT on luxury home a month after raising VAT to 12 percent?

Did it not scrap NHI on behalf of the pirate insurers who now hold you hostage to the most rapacious healthcare industry?

And all you can come back with is "he's forgotten about the insurance".

How sad and telling.

Andrew Allen

I appreciate your response.

When I talk about having no peers, I mean only in per capita terms and, yes, I was referring to far more than "quality" inflows, as my letter outlines. I will try to find relevant data for Singapore etc., but cannot imagine we are anywhere near middle of the pack for FDI per capita. Even $500 million in a population of 400,000 is pretty massive and few countries of our size have an investment half the size of either Atlantis or Baha Mar.

But I think we are onto the same points. Governments here look at FDI like it's some kind of quick fix drug, when in fact we could probably have twice as robust an economy with half the level of FDI that we have if we did not squander its benefits with concessions, regressive taxes and unnecessary "leakages".

Yea, right. Privatization is just SOOOO clean and uncorrupt. Lol. What planet have you been living on? Do you ever read newspapers from beyond this rock? Privatization (and frankly capitalism in general) is the elixir of corruption. In the UK, they sold off the railways to typical "private" gangsters who predictably squeezed out all the profit, didn't reinvest and destroyed a once-great public asset. The public now clamours for renationalization of that and much more.

Andrew Allen here, hello.

what on earth does an income tax have to do with foreign investors???????????

By definition, income taxes apply to wages earned in the domestic economy. So foreign domiciled companies (i.e. foreign investors) doing business here continue to pay their income taxes at home, not here.

Who will pay income taxes are owners of domestic companies (think Colina, Commonwealth brewery, Arawak Homes, Kelly's etc.)

These people are NOT foreign investors and they will NEVER leave here because this is the only place on earth they can make money. Of course they should be taxed on their humongous income.

Also, highly paid managers (mostly Bahamian) of foreign investment projects would pay tax income tax. How would that chase away foreign investors??

It is so frustrating how basically uninformed we are on these simple subjects in this country!!

The Bahamas spends about 18 percent of its GDP in government spending. This is about the lowest percentage on earth. You will certainly be hard pressed to find anything close if you actually look up the facts. FYI, the world average is about 40 percent. This goes for developed and developing countries, Asian ones, Caribbean ones, European ones and the US of A (between 38 and 43 percent for the last two decades).

On the other hand (almost uniquely on earth) it has no tax on income, capital gains or even multimillion dollar corporate profits and it goes out of its way to tax foreign property owners VERY lightly and does not take and resell their property if they do not pay. Instead, all of its taxes are on the poor and middle class (consumption taxes).

And you think the problem is too much spending (on the poor, who need it, and pay all the taxes), rather than the wealthy having to pay their fair share as they do everywhere else on earth? Wow. Ignorance is going to kill this country!

So I hear that NHI will wipe the piratic, parasitic private insurance industry off the map! That to me is reason enough to support NHI wholeheartedly. The other obvious reasons hardly need repeating. But who can complain with the present system of private care for the rich and cookouts for everyone else?

The idiotic argument that it is a 'tax' is simply laughable. If a government takes a portion of everyone's income in support of an expense that will eventually fall on everyone, and applies it to purchase insurance wholesale, rather than retail, that is called a savings plan. Only somebody who is themselves a parasite insurance provider or a brainwashed lackey cannot see that.