Dear Sir,

The letter from Mr Jason Hayward, of the BPSU, in The Royal Gazette of April 9 appears at first sight to be a reasoned response to the huge financial difficulties we are experiencing.

There are, however, at least three major fallacies in his thinking.

Firstly, when he speaks of the likelihood of job losses in the civil service, making things worse for the economy he overlooks what the French economist Frederic Bastiat called the “broken window” fallacy.

Government employees are paid by taxes collected from the general public, which means mainly those who work in private enterprise. The money he says that will be lost when there are public service job losses will now be retained by taxpayers who will continue to spend to meet their obligations for rent, electricity.

This by itself should help to stem job losses, if it does not create jobs.

Secondly, he completely ignores the fact that there are insufficient funds in the government treasury to continue paying civil servants in their present numbers, some of whom are in fictitious jobs. The Bermuda Government has run out of cash — as a community we are broke, busted, and spending way too much.

We have a per capita debt of around $100,000 which is one of the highest in the world, even greater than the basket case of Greece. It means that every man, woman and child is indebted to the tune of $100,000.

This is not chicken-feed. And it has to be paid sometime in the future.

Thirdly, he speaks glibly about a national plan not knowing that there is already in existence a national plan.

Everyone adult in Bermuda plans — they plan to pay their bills, they plan to educate their children, they plan to save for their retirement and in a host of other ways.

All of their plans added together make up a national plan.What I suspect Mr Hayward means is that government take over and supersede the planning of individuals in one grand national plan. The question is not a national plan but whose plan? That of Government or individuals?

Is it the plans of free individuals carrying out their adult obligations, or some master plan supervised and imposed by politicians and civil servants? It does not need me to say that this mirage has been tried time and time again by other governments and such plans have all collapsed.

Some have collapsed with the murders of millions of people, such as China and Russia.

Others have simply collapsed because they were unworkable such as Zimbabwe and the former East Germany.

He rightly mentions the need for foreign investment, to grow the population, and that business should be encouraged. His earlier suggestions means that he will make such things either more difficult or impossible to achieve.

He fails to mention that the dead hand of government restraints, an insane immigration policy, and excessive spending are what caused our financial problems.

In short, he is recommending a continuation of the economic madness that characterised Bermuda in the early years of this century. No thanks.

ROBERT STEWART