Ruinous politically correct measures
Since its inception as a new law, it looked suspiciously generous, sending prospective retirees salivating at the thought of taking home an additional loot or 30 percent of the last pay rate.
Recently, we found out that it is a good and well polished cadillac to bankrupting the local treasury in grand fashion. It’s a politician’s and recipients’ delight, a true leader’s nightmare as he or she sails the abyss of contracting revenue generation that has now become the norm rather than the exception.
The boom era of the late eighties must have been such “Happy Days” as to deceive our better judgment on prudent spending or building a reserve for that rainy day. We spent our perceived fortune like wealthy royals then when in fact our superficial wealth hangs on a shoe string.
Today, we begin to realize rather late that we’ve wasted our perceived fortune when we should have been building upon a reserve or putting money in the bank for difficult times. The difficult times or rainy days are here while our treasury has run dry and continues to contract in mind-numbing ways. Our local treasury is in fact bankrupt, a dire reality we continue to deny with suspicious confidence.
As such, the generous 30 percent bonus for retirees (beginning with last year’s group) has been temporarily suspended until further notice. Other protectionists laws too have played a key role in strangling current and future investments that are still in our books. We see these strangling policies are requisites in effective home rule, but never saw their devastating effects against the local purse. It goes to illustrate our propensity for approving ill-conceived policies that are best ruinous in wealth and jobs creation, eventual massive joblessnes at worse.
It is about time that all measures requiring expenditure of public funds must first undergo scrutiny of serious cost analysis. This would prevent any further creation of unfunded liabilities and would at least grant lawmakers some breathing time to thoroughly research their costs over the long haul. This measure–requiring cost impact analysis–must be drafted with powerful teeth to slam the brakes against ill-conceived policies that eventually turn into unfunded liabilities. And lawmakers can begin clearing this mess by the immediate repeal of all laws and regulations that strangle wealth creation. Don’t wait until mañana when half the business community have closed shop.
The future of these isles is really dependent upon how thoroughly we consider public policies. There’s nothing bright ahead of us by approving politically correct measures that only add fuel to a raging fire of bankruptcy. If in the end it is our considered view that we can’t afford it, slam the brakes now while we still have the breathing space to exit waltzing with more bankruptcies. We owe it to ourselves to do what is right, not what is politically correct. Si Yuus Maase`!
