Since 1609, prices have been wholly controlled by the private sector, more particularly, the corporate, banking, merchant or entrepreneurial class in our society. A class that has been supported by the United Bermuda Party and its successor, the One Bermuda Alliance. The name and faces of the players have changed, but the game of monopoly, power and control has not.

The UBP was the foundational architect of the inequitable, non-democratic, economic, commercial and financial sub-structures that we still labour under today. The OBA is the beneficiary of and successor to the legacy, core, principle and practice of the UBP. These substructures were, and are, in my opinion, deliberately designed to have the “intended consequence” of excluding largely Black and poor people, and to unevenly reward the White and well-to-do people in Bermuda.

Until the colonial, elitist model and sub-structure are thoroughly uprooted and destroyed, or deeply reformed, we will continue to perpetuate, and even make worse, the anomalies and inequities between the haves and the have nots we witness today.

Bermuda’s present economy, and society, operates in fundamentally the same manner as it did in 1609, 1834, 1964 and 1998. If we continue to do the same things with the same flawed apparatus, we are inescapably confined to the same flawed outcomes and consequences, no matter who is at the helm of the governance or political superstructure. The Progressive Labour Party or the OBA, it matters not.

Did change really come?

This conclusion, of course, is a ringing indictment as well of successive PLP administrations who should not have left it so late to their current minister to tackle the cost-of-living issues, largely on her own. Though largely ignored, then and now, the PLP has had more than sufficient talent within its ranks for decades to assist.

After all, the PLP is still the party for the less fortunate and vulnerable, and owes as much to its constituents. But you know the saying: “Your own fleas bite you the hardest.” That notwithstanding, the PLP must make this cost-of-living initiative a priority.

It must be a collective effort, across the government, with all PLP ministers, MPs, senators, ministries and supporters, tackling the lowering of the cost of living by way of price controls, and otherwise.

This initiative should have been commenced immediately after the PLP’s first term of government concluded in the early 2000s. After all, the issue isn’t a new one. There was a similar crisis, and hue and cry, as far back as the early 1970s.

With all of the negative undertones and overtones of such delay, the consequence is that at least two full generations of people have lived under this man-made plague of exorbitant prices for goods and services. One minister, or ministry, acting alone cannot carry the torch for us all. All hands are needed on deck. And now. Any recalcitrant members should be pushed from the ship, making way for a proper crew to come aboard and do the job of truly protecting the consumers and the workers of Bermuda.

Until the monopolistic oligopoly over “price setting and control” is utterly broken apart, reformed and brought under firm governmental control, any serious attempt at bringing down the cost of living across the board is at best aspirational, and will undoubtedly falter and fail.

How price controls work

Let’s get to those of you who say price controls only work in communist or socialist countries.

Rent controls, taxi meter rates, oil prices, aviation fees, and electricity rates are all forms of price control. Many of these price controls were long put in place in Bermuda by a very conservative, highly capitalistic UBP government.

Price controls have been for decades employed in the most capitalist country in the world, the United States. Federally, Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare are price-controlled entities, as are countless electricity utilities, taxi cabs, rents, price ceilings and price floors throughout the US economy.

These price controls hold stable prices to better accommodate those who have fixed and lower incomes so that they may enjoy a better quality of life. Temporarily or permanently is not the point. The point under discussion here is do price controls work or not, not how long do they work or not.

Let’s stick entirely with Bermuda. Unregulated by any meaningful government-implemented monetary or fiscal policies of any note, we are hit “full in the face” without warning with prices dictated and controlled by the private sector merchant or entrepreneurial class.

Consumers have had, and today have, little, if any, say in the matter. Consumers are helpless and hapless “price-takers”, not “price-makers”. Consumers are on a “take it or leave it on the shelf basis”, when they go into the shops or markets, etc, to purchase goods and services.

In economics-speak, consumers face “inelastic” prices, that is, no matter what the supply or demand for a given good or service, the consumer will have no choice but to pay, particularly if it is an essential good or service, the stated price for that good or service. The consumer will have to pay the stated price, no matter the level of supply or demand for it, or, frankly, the quality of that good or service.

Please, naysayers, do not put lipstick on the economic pig and trot out more nonsense about Bermuda having a “free market” economy. Are you serious? Please show me where bargaining, real or otherwise, between “buyers and sellers” for prices for groceries, medicines, clothing, bank loans, mortgages, and rents, etc, goes on in Bermuda or the US for that matter.

If you extend that sentiment globally, there is no “free trade” or perfect market distribution or allocation of fair price levels on the world markets either. Baseline prices for food, oil, gas etc. are deliberately and directly fixed and dictated by or at the hands of the “superpowers” in their international economic institutions, namely, the IMF, the World Bank, the G7, OECD and OPEC to name a few, and excuse me, Iran’s “on site” activities at the Strait of Hormuz.

Accordingly, it is right that “price controls” have been placed on rents, electricity rates, which can be much improved I do candidly state, and taxicab rates, etc, all with the intended consequences of making these affected services and goods accessible and more affordable to a larger segment of the population of society, largely to those of fixed and lower-income groups.

I don’t quite know why such an obvious, self-explanatory initiative should give pause, or cause for concern or delay, with pushing this legislation through that the Senate post haste.

What in all seriousness are the unintended consequences afoot?

Why is there an alleged “fear”, or real apprehension, for the comprehensive application, economy-wide, of “price controls”? Whose “fear”, the merchants or the consumers?

Given the current and escalating crisis in Bermuda, why shouldn’t these price controls be permanent, at least until prices are aligned with a formally established poverty datum line and a corresponding living wage or salaries benchmark for this country?

It’s clear that some businesses will lay off workers or threaten to do so. But it should be equally clear that the Government will firmly move in to meet that threat.

Now, it is perfectly understandable that if a given supplier, in an example of a “property owner or landlord”, has a huge mortgage to pay over a period of 20 to 30 years, then that potential landlord is going to rent to the highest payer. That landlord will either renovate their property and withdraw this property from rent control, or not allow it to enter into the requisite rent controlled property registration or listing zone in the first place.

That result is usually the consequence of a number of other well-known factors in play, not least the astronomically high interest rates of loans and mortgages at banking and financial institutions, high grocery prices, medical care fees and expenses for services, electricity rates. In short, the high and escalating general costs across the board of the cost of living and of doing business, in Bermuda.

That is precisely why, as suggested earlier, Bermuda needs a holistic approach, not a piecemeal one, to comprehensively and successfully tackle and bring under control, the exorbitant costs of goods and services in Bermuda.

Price controls on housing, healthcare, essential and nutritional “goods and services” are a start. Such controls are intended, and if properly deployed, monitored and enforced, will benefit those who need these controls and protections the most.

These approaches must, with fortitude, determination and political will, be relentless, efficient, and generalised throughout our economy. It is in the light of this backdrop that I cannot buy the vacuous argument that “price controls” are an administrative nightmare for companies. Price controls may well prove a threat to these merchants’ bottom line.

In this age of clinical, quick and laser-like forensic accounting, advanced technology and near faultless AI gathering of data, I find these merchants’ bleatings and whingings plain disingenuous. The tools these merchants have at their disposal are already being used on a daily, if not hourly, basis to monitor inventories of goods in their warehouses, on the shelves, and at the cashiers’ point-of-sale stations.

These merchants may have gotten away with this untrue and highly contrived argument back in the Seventies, and earlier, when the topic of personal and corporate income tax came up, and when many of us were less politically and economically experienced and astute.

But not today. Those tired arguments cannot fly now that the 15 per cent global minimum tax is fully in play. We know how the game works now. This global tax is likely here to stay, and may even evolve or devolve into our local economy if need be, and far into the unforeseeable future at least. As the saying goes, “it’s now time to pay the piper”, merchants. Hello, merchants, there’s a new “sheriff” in town.

• Phil Perinchief is a former Attorney-General of Bermuda. He holds master’s degree in economics and econometrics and previously worked as a statistician