Morris Cargill

IT WAS interesting to know that $21.2 billion was in circulation at the end of the Christmas season. This amount was very considerably more than the amount in circulation at the same time in the previous year. It might be of interest to try to figure out why this was so. It seems to me hardly likely that the increased money in circulation was because we all became rather suddenly richer, even though the fat cats did their best to make it possible.

It seems to me much more likely that a considerable extra sum in circulation was due to that silly business known as Y2K when large numbers of people in a totally false panic were sometimes even drawing out their total savings to guard against Y2K imaginary disasters. As I can't imagine that this gave anybody more money than they had before, it seems as if they were just salting away what they had in their pockets and in their mattresses under the bed. There is no evidence that they actually spent any more, and what will probably now happen is that a lot of the stuff they were stashing away will now go back to the banks. It would be interesting to see whether after the New Year there will be any dramatic increase in deposits.

It is possible of course that our national capacity for extravagance will result in a lot of people just blowing the lot instead of making re-deposits. It is also just possible that there has been a great deal of money floating around in our informal economy. We shall have to wait and see whether what looks like the negative growth in our economy is really as negative as our informal economy might indicate.

Tough wage talks

I see that the unions seem to think that the fat cat salaries of the public sector might be grounds for stirring up the trade unions into a new round of wage increases. Wage rates in Jamaica can be pretty puzzling in any event. For example, the union rates in the bauxite industry can be said to be a special form of aristocracy which has no real relevance to wage levels as a whole.

Then, of course, there are the more normal wage levels of people in general employment such as bank and mercantile employees of different kinds. At the bottom of the scale is a section that might be described as domestic workers. There are comparatively few domestic workers employed to a small number of rather rich people, but most domestic workers seem to be teetering around the edge of the minimum wage. There is certainly a great lack of uniformity in wage scales. When unionised workers talk of tough wage talks ahead, it is difficult to know what they really mean, or what they really expect. I suppose that the tightly unionised workers will get themselves some good deals, while most non-unionised workers will just have to fight things out as best they can.

Visions of grandeur

I am always rather amused to listen to the wonderful phrases used by so many politicians and by the Prime Minister in particular. All citizens, so the Prime Minister says, are to be given the opportunity for excellence. There is to be a Jamaica in which our citizens are uniformly efficient. There is to be a Jamaica of great economic growth in which all earn good wages. There is to be a Jamaica full of social facilities and caring people. There is to be a Jamaica filled with educational opportunities and in which the state acts with resolution and uniform concern for the elderly, poor, and disadvantaged. There is to be a society that is not only caring, proud, disciplined, and safe, but one that is just and embraces the highest possible ethical values.

So the Prime Minister tells us, and indeed what aspirations could be finer and more encouraging? The trouble with all these fine words and aspirations is that they don't mean a thing in real life. It is all blabber and self-foolery. It would be so much better if all these politicians including the Prime Minister gave up their fine talk in exchange for hard-headed actions and methods by which to bring about solid real improvements instead of the fulsome diet of pie-in-the-sky to which we are so regularly treated.

The fact is that we are all pretty well broke and in considerable difficulties at the present time, and what is sorely needed is the practical application of the ways and means by which our condition can be improved. Fine talk is like a drug to too many Jamaicans, and gets nobody anywhere. And we need, above all, efficient and honestly applied methods. It is this incapacity for efficient, down to earth action which is and will continue to be our constant undoing.

Bonfires

The Gleaner January 3, tells us that Flamstead's Millennium Bonfire was seen from four thousand feet above sea level in the Port Royal Mountains. It might be of interest to know that the word Bonfire really means bonefire, setting alight a large number of dried bones. A fire kindled by wood is simply known as woodfire, and one made of wood and bones is called 'St John fire'. It is also of interest to note that the Norwegians talk of a 'baun' which was a kind of beacon.

I am of course indebted to the learned Dr. Brewer for this information. Without Dr. Brewer, one is apt to suffer large chunks of misinformation.