Economic, political, and social toxins are disguised as cures, especially at times of significant global uncertainties, because merchants of quick fixes and their confederates know people are most anxious for elixirs. But these potions cause deadly damage.

Sellers of snake oils are busily walking the Earth trying their best to deceive whomever they can. What is their formula of subtle and overt deception? Insecurities! Broadly, these deceivers cunningly manipulate folk’s surface and/or deep-rooted insecurities.

Economic insecurities, for example, have existed since time immemorial. Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing that come in these times of global uncertainties. They claim to have magic concoctions that can solve especially long-standing problems in a jiffy. They are liars!

There are also cultural and identity insecurities. In a nutshell, these are beliefs that one’s way of life is under severe threat of being destroyed, especially by those who are considered as ‘other’, usually immigrants. Sellers of political elixirs have dozens of savory brews which they claim can remedy these insecurities in the blink of an eye. It’s all tomfoolery.

BUYER’S REMORSE

We who have the knowledge must not remain silent when we see sellers of social, political, and economic elixirs waving and splashing their concoctions, especially in front of the unsuspecting. Previously, I said in this space that the most recent and ongoing trial of democracy has exposed, yet again, some pre-existing conditions of especially Western-styled liberal democracy. The exposure of these long-standing vulnerabilities is meat and drink to opportunistic fringe elements and self-serving extremes of the right and the left.

It bears repeating that folks globally are becoming rapidly impatient with the snail’s pace at which democracies are delivering and/or more so failing to deliver especially social and economic goods. Mercenary-types thrive in these topsy-turvy conditions.

Some who suffer with severe status depravity love these chaotic realities. Some who parade snap-of-the-finger answers to very complex economic and social problems cherish these times. And, among other things, those who preach that they can magically use the present as a vehicle back to, for example, The Gilded Age, roughly 1865 to 1902, when there was rapid economic growth and industrialisation in America, revel whenever serious threats to the advance of democracy materialise.

The most recent exposure of the vulnerabilities of democracy needs to serve as a wake-up call to all democratically elected governments and all well-thinking folks globally. We in Jamaica need to be extremely vigilant to prevent ourselves from being sucked into an existing and very powerful vortex of tomfoolery.

Why? Unlike countries like the United States of America, with 249 years of experience in institution-building, Jamaica has been politically independent only since 1962. Consequently, Jamaica, as yet, does not have, for example, some of the very elaborate and deep-rooted self-correcting mechanisms of America’s checks and balances. Jamaica, therefore, cannot afford to repeat the very costly mistakes that come with buyer’s remorse.

Up to early 1989 we were on a positive social, economic, and political trajectory. It was a grave mistake to have changed course. That hugely costly error has taken us 20 years to correct.

Believe it, buyer’s remorse has a big burdensome social, economic, and political price to it. Screaming, “If mi did know,” does not pay for that burden. It requires much blood, sweat, and tears from the entire population to set back the country on a sustained path. Previously, I detailed here how the People’s National Party (PNP) took a wrecking ball to the economy for some 18½ years. That awful period of chronic economic stagnation ripped the heart out of the local black business sector; social decadence was put on steroids; crime, in particular murders, catapulted. Our reputation was reduced to near shreds, regionally and internationally.

Buyer’s remorse is entirely preventable. Yes, it is. One does not have to be a clairvoyant to avoid buyer’s remorse. One does not have to have a degree to avoid it. And one does not have to be of a particular class, colour, and/or creed to circumvent it. One simply has to look at the records of the past and the realities/results of the present in order to determine the future. Only foolish persons repeat costly errors.

IMPORTANT LESSONS

The consequences of the decisions made by other countries are invaluable lessons too. Thousands of Americans are having buyer’s remorse in regard to the election of Donald J Trump as president last November. Protests dubbed ‘Hands Off’ involving thousands of Americans across some 1,000 locations happened last week. The protestors are demanding that Trump change course, now.

Trump, among other things, had promised to lower inflation and prices. Today, prices for many basic consumer goods are climbing, fast, and certainly much faster since Trump too charge of the Oval Office. Many of his decisions since taking office less than 100 days ago have resulted in thousands of federal workers losing their jobs. Global stock markets have been put in a tailspin, resulting in trillions in financial losses for thousands globally. Trump says this is all necessary pain before the coming MAGA (Make America Great Again) gains.

Trump’s World Trade War now has many questioning whether a 2007-2009-like financial crash is nigh. Some noted economists say there is a 70 per cent chance of the American economy going into recession if Trump does not change course, now.

What is Trump’s endgame? He says, among other things, that thousands of especially manufacturing jobs will be brought back to America from countries like China and Vietnam. Many trade experts say this is mere nostalgia on steroids since, unlike the 1930s, the most advanced economies in today’s world are heavily invested in automation, digitalisation and related processes of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is the dominant growth game in town.

David Lubin, senior research fellow at Chatham House in the United Kingdom, speaking to
Channel 4 news in the UK last week, noted that: “The central difference between today’s world economy and the world economy of the 1930s is that we are much more trade-dependent than we use to be.” The creators/producers of high value-added from goods and services are today’s kings of global trade.

In the first my The Agenda piece for this year, January 5, 2025, entitled ‘Deliver or perish!’, I said: “Recall, for example, that in 2016, while campaigning in Iowa, Donald Trump, said: ‘I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?’ Trump might very still think he is politically invincible. I am willing to bet that if he does not materially deliver on his most recent promises he will go to the wall, and fast.”

The US’s midterm elections are a little under two years away. Will the Republicans do well? They will be humbled if Trump continues on his present course. Or is it that the experts are wrong and Trump is right?

At present, though, even some of Trump’s biggest supporters/donors are expressing buyer’s remorse. Consider this: ‘Billionaire Trump backer warns of ‘economic nuclear winter’ over tariffs’. The news item delivered these and related details: “A billionaire backer of Donald Trump has urged the US president to pause his recently announced trade tariffs, or risk a ‘self-induced, economic nuclear winter’.

“Amid market turmoil, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said the president should take three months to allow countries to renegotiate their trading relationships with the US.

“On Monday, Ackman’s warning was echoed by another prominent Wall Street figure, with JPMorgan Chase Chairman Jamie Dimon saying that Trump’s tariffs risked pushing up prices for Americans.” (British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC News], April 7, 2025)

‘JOLLY’ OLD ENGLAND

The USA is just one of many countries globally in which folks, having invested heavily in democracy, are demanding to get dividends, now. Hoodwinkers, political three-card men, shysters, and merchants of easy street and Abracadabra are on the prowl 24/7. These conmen realise that opportunity is knocking for them to devour especially the unsuspecting. Beware!

Complex problems cannot be solved by the waving of a magic wand. No matter the sweet-sounding words which they use, no matter how well credentialled they are, no matter the new shiny robes in which they adorn themselves, don’t believe them when they tell you that Superman is real. He is not. No one can fix especially long-standing problems overnight or by magic.

Here is another case of severe buyer’s remorse.

At the time of writing, just over three million British citizens had signed a petition calling for their prime minister, Keir Starmer, to call fresh elections. Starmer’s Administration has rejected calls for a general election and said the Government would “continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on”. (House of Commons Library, December 17, 2024)

Starmer and his British Labour Party, a fraternal twin of the PNP here at home, took back the keys to 10 Downing Street, last July. Starmer, a typical socialist, made a trailer-load of promises during the election campaign. Recall, too, that Starmer, on the night of his massive election victory — albeit in the midst of an unprecedented low voter turnout — said, among other things: “My Government will serve you; politics can be a force for good. Our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal, and a return of politics to public service. Our work is urgent and we begin it today.” (
Sky News, July 5, 2024)

“Change begins now,” Starmer later told the media and the British people. They took him at his word, as they should. Soon after Starmer marched into 10 Downing Street he announced that he had discovered a huge £22-billion “black hole” in the UK’s public finance. Since then taxes have been increased and hundreds of Britons have lost their jobs.

“Things are really bad here,” friends of mine in England tell me. These are people who have fairly good jobs, and one has a small business. Again, complex problems cannot be solved by the waving of any magic wand.

Notwithstanding what Starmer describes as the £22-billion black hole, folks are screaming: “We trusted you. We believed in your promises, and we want our piece of the pie and we want it now!”

The fringe parties in Britain, of course, smell blood. Starmer is in trouble and buyer’s remorse is massively spreading.

Consider this: “Membership of Britain’s upstart anti-immigration Reform UK party has overtaken that of the centre-right Conservative Party for the first time, the party said Thursday, as Tories disputed the numbers.” (AFP, December 26, 2024).

The top three rungs of the UK’s party popularity ladder were held by the Tories, Labour, and the Liberal Party alternately for just over 200 years. The Reform Party, which apes the Republicans, has now climbed atop in credible polls.

What is happening in the UK is not unique. Democracy is on the ropes. Beware of the fly-by-nights and, as we say locally, “pitch-by-day” who will tell you they can walk on water.

ABLE HANDS

The global economy is in a very delicate state. It is imperative that only the most able hands are allowed to manage Jamaica’s national affairs, especially at this time. These are times to walk wide of those who have a history of resurrecting failed socialist experiments, predicated on suicidal borrowing, crippling taxation, and the redistribution of resources in the absence of prior production.

Jamaica must not entrust the macroeconomic gains of the last 13 years to people whose immediate predecessors set Jamaica on economic fire. When the fire services came to extinguish the blaze, which they set, they feigned innocence. Those who pretended to be innocent of this avoid taking responsibility, and are using illusions to distract especially the unsuspecting so that they can grab the keys to Jamaica House. Well-thinking Jamaicans have a duty to sound the alarm on the misleaders.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.

WASHINGTON, DC, United States — US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled Make America Wealthy Again at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025.

STARMER… made a trailer-load of promises during the election campaign (Photo: AFP)

Garfield Higgins