The real price of progress
Dear Editor,
“Every mickle mek a muckle” the old people say, but these days the little we have doesn’t seem to be adding up to much.
Every week we’re told the economy is improving, inflation is easing, remittances are steady, and unemployment is low. Yet when we step into the supermarket the story is different. The same $10,000 that once covered groceries now barely fills a bag. Taxi and bus fares inch up, electricity bills wobble, rent keeps climbing. For many working Jamaicans “progress” is something we hear about but can’t feel.
It’s not that the numbers are made up, it’s that they’re incomplete. Growth that doesn’t translate into affordability is not progress. It is paralysis disguised as prosperity. Teachers, civil servants, security guards, and young professionals are quietly stretching pay cheques, skipping small comforts, and postponing plans because survival has replaced advancement as the national goal.
We can’t keep measuring success by gross domestic product (GDP), debt ratios, and headlines while the quality of life declines for the people who keep the country running. We need an honest conversation about wages and prices, not as talking points, but as a plan. That means a clearer path to fair wages; real productivity support for small businesses; and firmer action on the everyday leaks that drain households: transport costs, unpredictable utilities, and basic food items that feel like luxury goods. It also means empathy in policymaking. Do we still see each other in this struggle or have we reduced people to data points?
“Out of many, one people” should mean that rising tides lift ordinary boats, not only yachts. If the average Jamaican can’t buy a week’s worth of grocery without sacrifice, then the scoreboard is wrong. The real measure of progress isn’t the strength of the dollar, it’s whether families can live with dignity, pay the bills, feed the children, save a little, and breathe.
Until that becomes true, we haven’t progressed. We’ve only learnt to celebrate numbers that leave too many of us behind.
SP
Student of The University of the West Indies
