Preparing way for our grandchildren

THE EDITOR: It is amazing how some people in TT dismissively comment on the 2018/2019 national budget. Perhaps the Ministry of Finance has not been effective enough in conveying the nature and implications of the budget to the general public or it may be that people do not fully understand how our national debt level can destroy their daily lives. Nonetheless, listen to some comments on the proposed budget:

The political leader of the Congress of the People, Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan: The 2018/2019 budget offers this country no vision for its future.

Businessman Anthony Hadeed, principal consultant of Your Life Purpose Ltd: Ordinary citizens of Trinidad and Tobago feel raped.

Several participants in the San Juan Business Association’s 2018 post-budget forum: The alleged economic turnaround is not trickling down to ordinary people.

All of the above have been articulated in the face of basic macroeconomics which tells us that a national budget affects everyone; the government gets money from taxes and fees to fund it and spends the money on things like national security, infrastructure, grants for research, education, culture and the arts, and social programmes such as welfare and health. It can also talk about a budget deficit and a budget surplus – spending more than revenue and less than revenue, respectively.

However, while the budget regulates our standard of living, its principal function is not to invest for the private enterprise to grow fat, but to save us from excessive deficit spending. This is important because deficit spending can lead to the risk of a country defaulting on its debt service obligation which in turn can cause the country to lose its social, economic and political power in the world.

Therefore, if we judge the budget only by the criterion of decreasing deficit spending, then the Minister of Finance will have to be celebrated profusely – and with gratitude. He is helping us to do better than Venezuela, Greece, and Argentina. Indeed, he is preparing the way for our grandchildren.

RAYMOND S HACKETT, Curepe