The combination of the recent launch of the National Poverty Study or the National Assessment of Living Conditions (NALC) as it is correctly entitled, and the publication of the latest Labour Force survey has revealed some interesting contradictions.
Not least that as the Government focuses on trying to establish what it means to be poor in this jurisdiction, the work of the Economics and Statistics Office, (ESO) reveals that 97 percent of households in the Cayman Islands have at least one car, 95 percent have a cell phone and over three quarters subscribe to satellite or cable television.
The Labour Force survey tells us that the country is in the enviable position of having full employment, with only 2.6 percent of the workforce not employed, yet Government tells us that numerous people say they cannot find work because the expatriates are taking all the jobs.
For those that want to take the time to scrutinize the results of the latest work from the ESO, they will discover that there are more Caymanians working in the financial sector than there are expatriates, but yet the Government tells us that locals are not getting the bigger bite of the offshore pie.
Perhaps these contradictions owe much to the fundamental point that the Cayman Islands has up until this point been, essentially, a success.
In short we have far more conspicuous wealth here than we do poverty and while there certainly are far too many families falling through the cracks, considering our wealth, that probably owes far more to administrative and Government mismanagement than it does to the fact that there isn’t enough money to go round or for them to benefit from trickle down.
But we could be on the brink of an economic decline that could change our economic fortunes for the worst.
And it may be the growing contradictions in our society that are combining to push our economy towards failure.A spiraling cost of living, an outrageous immigration policy in the form of the seven year roll over limit and no political will to address the problem of future population growth and overall development, could well conspire to see our collective economic success collapse.
The Cayman Islands is increasingly becoming a place of contradictions in many areas.
According to one local entrepreneur as reported in today’s edition of Cayman Net News Business Monday, the country’s residential real estate market is offering little return for investors, but the commercial sector is still presenting great opportunities.
Banks, property developers and real estate business are reporting to this publication that the seven year work permit limit rollover policy within the immigration law, is undermining the certainty of the market, but yet land is still being snatched up for development.
We talk about the need to address poverty, yet just about every household has a car, a phone and cable TV, things that are considered beyond the wildest dreams of so many other people around the world.
Meanwhile there are also people living in trailers two years after Hurricane Ivan struck our shores in September 2004 and left these families without a roof over their heads.
The survey tells us that well over half of the Caymanians in the workforce are earning more than $2500 per month and almost 15 percent of Caymanians are in the highest earning brackets, but yet the National Housing Development Trust tells us that there is a growing demand for the Government subsidized Affordable Home, because people cannot afford to buy or rent in the private sector.
Although we are all told that Caymanians are being squeezed out of the best jobs by expatriates, and hence the need for rollover, the contradiction revealed by the Labour force survey is that the financial service sector employs the greatest number of Caymanians. 14.8 percent of the Caymanian workforce is working in that sector whereas only three percent of the non-Caymanian workforce is in finance.
And the contradictions continue.
The important lesson Government should take from this is that anecdotal evidence is no substitute for real research. And no matter whether or not the figures meet or diverge from the political sentiment of the day this Administration and those to come should be basing policy on extensive definitive data that reveals the true position of the country’s population.
Basing policy on emotional and political sentimentality is not just self-serving governance but irresponsible as well.
