During a general dinner conversation recently someone commented that people should not expect the government to do everything, that citizens have a keen role to play. It's a perfectly correct point of view but we should consider the prevailing factors in TT that might enable and disable people from being active citizens.
Many words and ideas immediately come to mind: entrepreneurship, innovation, education, experience, imagination, creativity, knowledge, opportunity, finance, infrastructure, agency, work ethic, leadership, governance, outmoded systems, unreconstructed public service, race politics, lack of shared vision, middle class in transition, shift in societal power dynamics, corruption, short termism. Let's focus on just one - agency, and what our care-free, subsidised lifestyle does to the citizen.
It would be hard to argue that any other national of any other country enjoys a more cushy lifestyle than we do in TT. Not only are we patronised, we also enjoy freedoms many other countries' citizens could only dream of. Gulf States, much energy richer than us, may subsidise their people's living more but the price is having to endure severe restrictions on behaviour and self expression. And in poorer Arab countries, eg Egypt, the people may buy bread more cheaply but it is mainly what many of them have to eat.
We Trinbagonians pay few taxes and the standard rate income tax is quite low for high earners and commerce, compared to elsewhere. In addition, we escape road, sales and local government taxes, death duties, taxes on personal wealth (property, pensions and savings). We are also educated free of charge from primary to tertiary level, enjoy free medical services and essential drugs, subsidised petrol, travel and electricity, early retirement age (the rest of the world has moved to 65 or 67) and more. Furthermore, children and students, the unemployed and under-employed, the incarcerated, the many in the informal economy and the aged pay no taxes. The TT tax net has also been so narrow that many adults have never qualified for taxes. The many gardeners and housekeepers, handymen, market vendors, itinerant traders and service providers, 'earnin' a little someting' do so for their own benefit. They do not contribute to the national coffers and in that sense have no personal investment in the state. Maybe around half the population pays income taxes, and our tax system has been lax for so long that many people do not pay even when they should. We should consider what this actually means.
The spoon feeding deprives our people the chance of being responsible citizens by not allowing them to be paid up members of society. The humane response might be that we must care for the weakest in our society. But we have to be careful that we are not the cause of the weakness. Nobody turns down a helping hand but it may be misguided. Voting every few years is not democracy, it is passiveness unless people understand their duty as citizens does not end at the ballot box. Centralised government distances citizens fr
