Created: Jun 01, 2024 08:00 AM
Picture courtesy of Tim Brinton
“So weep ye ancients who deplore that Outdated Bermuda is not any extra”
Expensive Sir,
Bermuda is now the house of the rich and the poor. The Bermuda of the Eighties and Nineties is not any extra. There was previously, a thriving center class which paid its taxes, schooled its youngsters, ready for outdated age, and left an inheritance for its offspring. That’s no extra!
Mary Hardworker is a typical instance of the center class. She was a gentle, reliable worker for some 52 years. She bought a home, gathered a nest egg of some $250,000, and loved a small pension when she retired. Now on the ripe outdated age of 85, she is incapable of taking care of herself and has been in a seniors dwelling for 5 years. Her funds are quickly being depleted. The Authorities says she shouldn’t be destitute, as she has funds left in her account, however quickly these funds can be worn out.
Mary has an issue and so does Bermuda! Who can afford $6,000 to $12,000 a month for healthcare? Solely the very wealthy! What number of retirees have deliberate like Mary Hardworker, our middle-class poster little one?
The nation’s leaders — political and enterprise — have sucked the life blood out of the center class, and these leaders embrace these within the medical occupation. They’ve nickel-and-dimed the center class to loss of life. The banks have lower the curiosity paid to savers equivalent to Mary Hardworker to virtually zero, whereas rising their lending fee to debtors — and levelling units of charges on them “to extend shareholder fairness”.
Companies and traders get great authorities incentives and tax breaks, whereas the center class and poor obtain one other $10 on their month-to-month pensions.
Bermuda, as soon as an island of church buildings and bars, is now quick changing into a land of clinics, which seems to be the brand new money cow of docs and traders.
The price of groceries, medicines, docs’ visits, and so on, is astronomical. Repairs for the whole lot, from plumbing to mechanical, are priced as if we’re coping with docs and the authorized occupation. Think about $85 to $100 an hour for a plumber, electrician or landscapers who solely “mow, blow and go”.
Supposed protectors of the poor and center class, just like the Regulatory Authority, genuflect to the electrical energy and energy suppliers. Tom, Dick and Harry obtain concessions. Not so with Mary Hardworker.
Grocery shops cynically ask the patron, in the event that they want to “spherical up” and provides the distinction to charity, whereas they improve their costs and the grocery packers who used to get the “round-up” have a look at you, hoping for the change or a gratuity for packing the groceries. There’s by no means an choice to “spherical down”.
A pacesetter as soon as said that “cash doesn’t develop on timber”. He was completely appropriate. Prior to now, cash used to develop on the “center class”, however that class now not exists. In the meantime, because the Good E-book factors out, “the poor shall by no means stop out of the land”. (Deuteronomy 15:11)
And so, whereas we have a good time how Bermuda is now on the high of the world chart of the costliest locations to reside on Earth, and whereas our authorities grants huge concessions to companies and traders, allow us to mourn the demise of a once-thriving island — which is being bought off piece by piece, and which is now not sustained by a vibrant, overtaxed and now deceased center class.
CLEVELYN A.J. CRICHLOW
Paget