Dear Editor,

The research and development function is a critical component of growth in a knowledge-based economy. Therefore, the present Administration has decided to allocate funding to finance this area. Financing will also be made available to entrepreneurs interested in commercialising local research. Improving the masses through innovation and business development is now viewed as a viable mechanism for wealth creation.

Jamaicans are becoming increasingly proud and more sceptical of socialist platitudes. Hence, the People’s National Party’s (PNP) Dr Peter Phillips is seriously deluded in thinking he can outshine Andrew Holness of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) by selling ailed socialist rhetoric to the masses.

Unemployment, according to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, is at a record low, and now even consumers are more confident than businesspeople. So, when Dr Phillips notes that prosperity is not reaching the average Joe he is merely creating a boogeyman to malign the current Administration.

Poverty does not endow any Jamaican with preferential treatment. The Government responds to poverty by creating an economic environment facilitating entrepreneurship; thus effecting an incentive to invest and create jobs. These jobs will relieve the masses of their penury, provided that they add value to their employer. And, to rectify the problem of inadequate skills, this Administration created a litany of programmes.

Holness wants to move the mindset of average Jamaicans from a state of pity to one of autonomy. Phillips has consistently misread the mood of the electorate. The politics of redistribution and envy promoted by the PNP is no longer endearing to most people. Dr Phillips may speak indefinitely about elusive free education or land reform, but no one has time for remnants of a socialist past. He ought to encourage his poor followers to exercise independence so that they may create their own wealth. If this is done then the poor will not need to begrudge anyone for their prosperity.

Those in the party like Dayton Campbell using the moniker economic justice advocate should get familiar with the concept of economic freedom. The latter means that all people must be able to freely participate in the process of free exchange. When such freedom is evident then the capacity of the poor to accumulate wealth will be unlimited. There can be no economic justice, because in reality institutions and citizens have no obligation to the poor. The truth is that poor people are not special, society does not owe them anything, and they are not entitled to live like their middle-class counterparts.

Jamaicans want free markets and wealth; we are not interested in the socialist shenanigans of the PNP. In the best interest of the country, the PNP should exit the political environment and make way for another party.

Lipton Matthews

lo_matthews@yahoo.com