It is a known fact that regardless of the economic growth figures that are presented with much flamboyance by the Minister, that the Guyana ship has been sinking for the last decade under the Jagdow/Ramu cabal. If you look at all the human development index, you will find that the society is worst off today than it was a decade ago on many major indicators such as:
- Functional literacy;
- Child mortality;
- Poverty levels;
- Un-employment rates.
To illustrate this concept of the wealth-less peasant class, the wealth-less poor and the young and the wealth-less, let us do a simple arithmetic lesson to illustrate the fundamentals:
If a country has 100 persons and over a year, it is made up as follows:
- wealthy – 10,
- middle class – 20,
- peasant class – 30 and
- the poor and impoverished – 40
This is similar to the make-up of the Guyanese economic stratification.
The overall economy can grow by 5.2% but who get what?
The poor, who make up 40% of the nation, can still experience contraction in their wealth by 4%. Why?
Because the geometric growth in the wealth of the Babby Ramboops and the other BEEs is so great that it compensate arithmetically for the stagnation in the wealth for the 70% of the nation that experiences no increase in their wealth or decreases in their wealth.
It is estimated that these former bicycle riders are experiencing growth rates averaging around 60% ever year for the last 4 years. This means that if they invest $100, they walk away with $160 at the end of the year.
The computation below:
No. | Growth Rate | Sum | |
wealth | 10 | 60 | 600 |
middle class | 20 | 4 | 80 |
peasant class | 30 | 0 | 0 |
impoverished | 40 | -4 | -160 |
TOTAL | 100 | 5.2 | 520 |
I trust all those protagonists who come here preaching about the 5.2 percent 2012 growth rate will be cautious in parroting these figures without a proper understanding of the socio-economic realities for the majority of Guyanese.
Some 70% of Guyanese do not share in the joys of seeing increase in their assets from their own sweat and this is not because they do not work hard. This is because an uncaring Jagdow/Ramu regime decides that it is OK to pay a sugar worker $50,000 a month for back breaking work and not a cent more. However, this same Jagdow/Ramu regime thinks it is OK for Fip Matilal to walk away with G$600 million from the Treasury with no sweat and no shame.
But god is great. Most of those in this 70% have families in the Diaspora and they experience a transfer of wealth from the diaspora. Thus the Western Union trade and the barrel trade is the divine blessing that keep most of the 70% of the nation in a state of sanity in Guyana today.
For those with no families in the Diaspora, the Jagdow/Ramu cabal provide other options – child prostitution, crime, become drug mules or if nothing else works, a nice cutlass chop up session with the family or the Berbice Mad House is always there – a state of insanity.