The Editor, Sir:

If indeed imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the surviving members of the often vilified People's National Party (PNP) administration of the 1970s must now finally be feeling some sense of vindication from the fact that the more novel ideas this current administration can muster have all been resurrected from 35 years ago.

However, when Michael Manley proposed a salary cut for his Cabinet, it was not a diversionary gimmick designed to distract the media and the population from the harsh realities with which the nation was grappling. That decision was rooted in the socialist ideology that the benefits and burdens of the national economy should be reasonably and evenly distributed.

Conscious or unconscious philosophy

When the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government revamped the income tax regime in the early 1980s, that decision emanated from their own conscious or unconscious conservative philosophy that the masses exist primarily to advance the privileges of the minority upper classes.

What has resulted from that move is that for the last 25 years, through PAYE, the brunt of the burden of financing the budget was placed on the lower middle class, which is comprised mainly of teachers, nurses, policemen and other civil servants.

By refusing to honour their wage agreement with the civil servants, the JLP, despite all their promises about 'change', has returned in rather dramatic fashion to its backward and unprogressive socio-economic arrangements by placing the exaggerated financial weight created by the global crisis squarely on the backs of the already distressed middle class.

And what is even more alarming is that the Opposition, the trade unions, the JTA, the media and civil society, under the big stick blackmail of job cuts and the fancy political footworks of pay cuts for MPs, seem set on allowing the Government to get away with it.

When the middle class has no money to spend, businesses will fail and the economy will collapse. So if not for their newly found left-leaning tendencies, I urge the Government to do the right thing out of economic common sense: revisit the income tax regime and redistribute the burden of the crisis.

A wage freeze is not the only available option and we can well do without the salary cut charity when we have greater income tax parity.

I am, etc.,

STANLEY REDWOOD

stanley_redwood@yahoo.com

Middle Quarters

St Elizabeth