Comment #Jsy2018: Where are the proper policies?

Friday 04 May 2018

It's election time, so you may be forgiven for thinking you'd be hearing lots of policies for making the island a better, wealthier, greener and more equal place.

Wrong. For candidates standing as individuals, rather than as a party, they need the support of perhaps 24 others to get any policy through - which means that your voting choice is based more on their personality or their ideas, rather than their promises. Even if the island's one political party gets every one of its candidates elected, it's still perfectly possible it won't have a majority in any vote.

Express columnist, The Insider, gives his personal view of what's being promised so far, from his seat near the top of the island's principal industry...

"I would like to see less wishful thinking and more practical realistic policies from election candidates.

The hustings are revealing the usual mixed bag, in terms of quality - and they all seem well meaning and genuine in universally saying what we want to hear.  

Which is: “…we want to make things better.” Perhaps I am wrong to expect more, but I was hoping for genuine policy proposals.  

They say that in a democracy, voters get what they deserve because the basic principle of telling the voter what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, results in victory irrespective of the quality of the policies. 

My own view is that Jersey is at a cross roads, which demands the government we need, not the government we would like.  

Everybody wants ‘better’ but we ought to consider the starting point.  I come from a ‘poor’ family, but I would rather be poor in Jersey than in many other places.  Change is necessary, but we should be very careful not to ruin what we have because, if you travel the world, you will quickly find that Jersey is not a terrible place to live - the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is nowhere near as extreme as it is elsewhere.

Perhaps because I would expect a party to be better organised than an individual, I had higher hopes when reading the Reform manifesto.  I was disappointed that it had not gone beyond wishful thinking, and that some of the wishes were based on a poor understanding of economics.

The offering from Reform is predicated on the idea that the economy currently only works for a ‘few’ at the top.  Whilst this plays strongly to the ‘many’ who want to improve their position, I think it is fundamentally wrong. The Jersey economy already works for the many, when compared to almost anywhere else in the world.  

To be clear, I expected to find the manifesto built on the principle of taking away from the smaller number of people who will never vote for them (the haves) and giving it to a larger number who will vote for them (the have less). And I did.  I just didn’t expect it to be so unimaginative.

It is cloaked in the concept of fairness which makes any challenge appear mean spirited.  I am, at least today, in the ‘have’ camp but I am certainly not mean spirited.  I give a lot of both time and money to various social issues; but I resent giving more to a government which, even at its most efficient, feels it knows best and wastes too much.  

Jersey, once you add up the stealth taxes, is no longer the low tax jurisdiction it once was.  I suspect that we are close to a tipping point where, without more efficient government, the tax base might begin to erode, which creates a downward spiral for any economy which is very difficult to escape from.  I am not sure there is that much more in the ‘tax well’ to give. 

I fear fiscal incontinence and believe that we need a proper set of costed policies which take the middle line between being funded by the ‘haves,’ and being funded by less waste and more self-help.  These are lacking across the board. 

As an example, consider the Reform pledge to raise the minimum wage to £10 by 2022.  I acknowledge the issue of low pay.  This sounds like a fair response.  Yet it does a deep disservice to the low paid workers they aim to help.  Basic supply and demand will tell you that as a result of these higher wage costs, businesses will employ fewer people.  

This is particularly troubling in an era where automation is already eroding the job prospects for low skilled workers.  What is more concerning for an economy like Jersey, which is heavily dependent upon good salaries in the middle ranks of the finance industry for its tax base, is that this is already happening in financial services. 

It means the low skilled will have more competition for jobs; and fewer jobs for the low paid, low skilled, will result in more hardship.  

A more logical response is to increase skills which allow those workers to complete for better paid jobs.  That is better for them as it improves their life-long negotiating power. 

It also deals directly with the major weakness in our economy, which is a lack of productivity growth - although it will not grab as many votes as waving the magic wand to make people feel better."

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and not those of the Bailiwick Express.