DISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH

Although the big news this week is the royal screw up with the distribution of vacinnes to the elderly, I think that it can best be summed up by saying that the Minister of Health should either resign or be fired. He can't say that 'it wasn't my fault'. If it had gone well wouldn't he be claiming credit? He can't have it both ways  and it is time that we in this little country of ours start to call a spade a spade and to hold people accountable. It's either we do that or we continue to accept third and fourth world standards  and give up all hopes of a better, fairer society.

But this latest screw-up by the Minister of Health is simply another distraction from the real issue, which in one word is economics.

Labour's share of the nation's income has been falling for a long time now. We see it and we feel it and we see wealth slowly (and not so slowly) increasingly falling into the outstretched hands of a few as opposed to the many. When we talk about economic prosperity, when that prosperity is accruing to -everyone or just an elite few - that should increasingly become a big part of the debate.

What is taking place now is simply a continuation of the Thatcher/Reagan trickle down theory from the eighties, i.e., that if you let rich people get richer some of that wealth will trickle down to the masses.

I disagreed then with that theory and I am sorry to say that subsequent events have events have justified my skepticism. We need to start thinking very seriously about how we want to distribute the wealth that our country generates and exactly how we are going to do it. Because it is clear that the wealth of our country is NOT being distributed in anything approaching an equitable manner.