Dear Editor,
I very much like Prof Clive Thomas’ suggestion to share out a million dollars from the oil money. Every citizen (not every household or group of people) who is qualified to vote and possesses no other citizenship should receive this one-time premium; no conditions applied. It would
1) literally eliminate poverty at one stroke. Whoever claimed to be poor and remains poor after this cannot blame anyone but himself for not investing wisely.
2) empower every adult. We know that people have degrees of ability, knowledge and wisdom. Every adult would have the opportunity to change, one way or another. My father used to say that if the country was divided up equally and given to people, there would be no change, because the property of the ignorant and lazy would soon be lost to the industrious and shrewd.
3) be fair. No injustice would be done to the under-age, because they have the future. Who knows whether another such premium can be afforded later (for them alone and not the earlier recipients)? Rich or poor, prisoner or free, bad or good, all would be eligible.
4) leave it up to the people; not up to the politicians, economists, scientists and others who presume to know what is good for citizens. They can put their minds to investing the rest of the oil money. People must be free to donate it, pool it, educate with it, plant with it, or waste it. At least they will be thinking.
5) eliminate corruption in the distribution of the money. Careful and consequent identification and accounting can minimize fraud; so that if anyone turns up to discover that someone claiming to be him has already collected the money, the culprit could be found. GECOM or a social ministry could administer the distribution.
6) incentivize national registration.
Assuming a registration of half a million electors, this would amount to about US$2.5 billion. Using Tarron Khemraj’s lower estimate for gross income to Guyana (SN Aug 25, 2019), and assuming a market price of US$50 per barrel, the 5 billion barrels estimate for oil in the ground should yield at least US$30 billion.
Since this would become available only over time, a fifteenth of the income should be distributed from day one. The problem of who gets it when can be solved by lottery. A longer time period would mean that many coming of age can qualify.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
