I have been trying not to respond, but based on how viral this tweet is, it concerns me that it could be taken seriously.

As a Jesus loving believer, it pains me to see some in the church make a mockery of JA’s affairs.

So let’s dive in. RT plz.

//Thread

#FinanceTwitterJa https://twitter.com/steviblessed/status/1293005614109597696

“Pay off JA’s $2T in 90 days.”

Firstly, GOJ Central Govt expects to collect $579B in total revenues in 1 year.

So they expects us to believe that they will collect 3.5X the current government in 1/4 the time?

Secondly, all of this debt is not bad. There are many individuals, companies and organizations that have invested their cash with GOJ in exchange for a consistent interest payment every year (aka “Fixed Income”).

They depend on this income for everyday needs.

Some of these entities are individual pensioners that have accumulated savings over the years and just need an income so they can live on while they are retired.

If they are given back their money (ie JA debt cleared) how do they safely invest their savings so they can live?

Other entities are insurance companies, banks, financial institutions.

All of them are required to invest X% of their capital in “risk-free assets” (ie GOJ debt).

If they are all given back their funds, where do they put it? It’s illegal for them to do anything else with it.

Both illegal and imprudent.

You don’t want banks and insurance companies investing all of your deposits or premiums paid into risky investments that may not be there when you need it.

So this first suggestion of clearing JA’s debt tells me that they think GOJ debt...

is like personal, household debt, when it’s not.

Yes it is important for GOJ not to borrow too much (relative to its income - GDP), but the debt load has fallen from 147% of GDP 10 years ago to about 90+% today.

The biggest drop any country has ever done without help. Ever.

So right out the gate, that first promise can be dismissed as pure folly and should prove that these guys are unfit for managing the economic affairs of the country.

“Increase minimum wage to US$11/hr”

Let’s be clear, I would love to see our minimum wage reach to those levels. But it has to be done based on solid economic fundamentals.

When a government passes a min. wage limit it imposes that limit on every company & organization.

For many companies, the largest expense they incurr is wages.

Right now, the current minimum wage in Jamaica is $7,000/wk (I believe).

That works out to be about $175/hr.

At $7K/week, that’s an annual salary of about $364K JMD.

JA’s GDP per Capita (average income earned by the average worker) is roughly about US$5,354.

At $135:$1 that’s $722,790/year, $13,900/week, $347.50/hr.

So the average wage in JA is roughly 2X JA’s minimum wage.

At $135:$1, US$11 = $1,485/hr. A 4.27X increase.

Imagine you own a business and within 1 year, your biggest expense (wages) increases 4X with no changes in productivity (ie you don’t earn any more profit with that major increase in expense), is it rational to keep those people employed? No.

What most ppl will likely do is reduce their wage bill to what it was before.

In other words, cut their workforce to 1/4 the size. So all of a sudden, 3/4 of currently employed at those income brackets, are no longer employed.

Chances are those companies can’t survive on 1/4 the amount of labour, so their revenue declines and everything spirals until they have to shut down the company or downsize significantly.

Then all of those ppl no longer have income to buy groceries and pay their bills...

so now the entire economy is sent into a recession because the revenue for other companies that depend on those employees (think KFC, Juici, Digicel, NCB, etc.) begins to fall, so they have to cut wages as well which continues the downward spiral.

So this one move, will likely send the economy into a recession within 12 months if not sooner.

As if, the above wasn’t clear enough, let’s contrast it with the US.

Federal Min Wage in the US is $7.25/hr, but the average American earns US$63K/year.

So the average American earns 11X what the average Jamaican does, just by virtue of the economy, but they want the Jamaican minimum wage to be 51% higher than the US Federal Minimum Wage?!??

How dat mek sense?

I am running out of tweets in this thread, so I won’t be able to tackle all of points as detailed as above.

“Free education up to university” and “Free healthcare”.

We currently have some version of “Free healthcare” that is severely straining the system as is.

That aside, if the economy is gutted with mass unemployment as a result of a ridiculous jump in minimum wage, where will they get the funds to pay for “free education up to university”?

To be clear, there are already significant education subsidies as it is.

But how can you expand that significantly while your income dries up?

The general theme with their proposals based on Stevian’s tweet is “more services given away, more money paid to civil servants, less taxes taken in”.

That makes no sense and will never work in real life.

What would likely happen is if they win (which I do not expect), they would end up having to walk back most of their promises and end up having to operate like a normal government.

But the bigger question is if they are bringing this “run wid it on steroids” foolishness...

...can they be trusted to run the country? In my opinion, the answer is absolutely not.

But it does bring to the fore the point that we must all be vigilant.

We are coming up on the silly season.

Politicians will say all sorts of nonsense.

We need to hold them accountable.

We need to publicly ridicule foolish policies and comments that will jeopardize our fiscal and economic gains, security gains or general governance gains.

We need to ask for specific policies that will continue to turn Jamaica around.

Let us not get distracted with the foolishness.

This upcoming election is too important and this JPP party and their proposals reminds me that we cannot afford for the vote to be split.

It needs to go to the party that has policies that are sound and make sense.

And more importantly, one that we believe stands a good chance of actually implementing the policies they articulate on the campaign trail.

We are at a crucial point in our history and we can’t afford to be led astray and assume these guys won’t win.

They could derail it.