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INJECTING even a modicum of reason into the crass, truth-hating, lie-affirming fiction that passes for public debate in Bermuda has much the same effect as inserting a steel beam into a house of cards: the delicately arranged construct doesn't so much collapse as entirely disintegrate.

Redolent with half-formed totalitarian double-think, amateur league demagoguery and propagandistic flourishes so coarsely misleading they might shame even Fox News, the script followed by Bermuda's political leadership is predicated on talking around the most compelling issues confronting the island. This Government actually talks to the issues of the day only about as often as it acts to remedy them.

As a for-instance, set the inventory of sordid facts side by side with the Premier's latest episode of selective amnesia. A man who leads a Government that is to incorruptibility what Bill Clinton is to the Seventh Commandment now not only doesn't remember his pledge to update Bermuda's conveniently outmoded anti-corruption laws, he sees no earthly reason why they should be reformed. No one, it seems, exploits public office for private gain in the "New" Bermuda; no one makes unauthorised withdrawals from the public purse.

As another example, try to square the Tourism Minister's latest exercises in silken bullying ? upbraiding schools for not participating in his absurd Flop & Fizzle campaign, trying to unite a divided black community by re-invoking a common enemy, the now toothless (and largely penniless) white business community ? with the unhappy events taking place on his watch.

Rather than address the ever-widening Pay-to-Play scandal, rather than attempt to reconcile his plan for blowing up parts of the island to allow for armadas of mega-cruise ships with Government's too-little-too-late "sustainable development" policy, he is happier engineering headline-grabbing but insubstantial distractions.

This Government clearly believes it can brazen its way out of any situation with spin and , that untranslatable but unmistakable Yiddish term for effrontery cross-bred with shamelessness.

This has resulted in a Cabinet steered by some sort of internal compass which takes no account whatsoever of external conditions ? including storm warnings. As a consequence, some of the island's most pressing problems not only go unaddressed but, in some instances, remain completely unacknowledged.

This is particularly true in the social arena.

A meaningless catchphrase ? "The Social Agenda" ? is repeated with mantra-like doggedness by Government true believers to camouflage the fact there are, in fact, no specific plans of action for dealing with anything from education to housing to increasingly brutal crimes of violence.

The social pressures being created by increased overcrowding and a two-tier economy that allows the island's limited goods, services and resources to be dominated by those with seemingly unlimited cash-flows are making themselves felt throughout this community.

But these all-too predictable problems remain blind-spots for a Government that routinely opts for empty sloganeering as opposed to critical thinking.

Bermuda finds itself in one of those paradoxical Best-of-Times-Worst-of-Times situations that demands both logically consistent Government strategies and commitment to carrying them through. The economy is, in many regards, the envy of the world. But the social problems that have resulted from plenty are no fewer in number than those created by scarcity - and no less intractable.

An infrastructure designed for far fewer people is rapidly becoming overwhelmed by the shoe-horning of a seemingly limitless number of people into a limited amount of space: there are 8,000 guest workers on the island currently. Government estimates suggest another 8,000 work permits could be issued before the end of this decade.

Most of these new jobs will, of course, be created in the off-shore financial services sector, a sector most Bermudians have neither the educational qualifications nor the specialised training to enter. Countries with far larger populations than Bermuda's only manage to produce a few thousand professionals in these fields each year. It's unrealistic to the point of lunacy to suggest the off-shore workforce will ever attract Bermudians in sufficiently high numbers to offset the ongoing contraction in the tourism-related sphere. The small army of shop assistants laid off from Trimingham's, Smith's, Heritage House and the Windjammer Gallery, to name just four recent retail casualties, are unlikely to re-invent themselves as actuaries, insurance underwriters or stock brokers.

But those who contend this is the Best of Times (including Government and shills for the off-shore financial services sector) point to the indisputable fact the trickle down theory works in practice here, with Bermuda topping many international league tables when it comes to an annual per capita income of more than $50,000.

Even those not employed directly by the off-shore sector benefit from its presence here, they argue. Those who think the Worst of Times are upon us point to tables that chart the purchasing power of those Bermudian incomes when compared to what salaries in other countries can buy.

is, of course, the only realistic way to evaluate Bermudian living standards with those of the rest of the world. And in contrast to what their nominally underpaid North American or European counterparts make, the average Bermudian with his world-beating income, finds himself more than mid-way down the international league tables in terms of everything from home ownership to personal savings (Bermuda's rate of personal debt is the highest in the world by some reckonings).

And it's not just the comparative purchasing power of the average Bermudian income when weighed against international incomes that has to be considered. The obscenely distended wage differentials at home have to be looked at as well. These ever-widening disparities have resulted in an economic fault-line running through Bermudian society, one as potentially destabilising and dangerous as the tectonic variety. It's a chasm-like divide separating those who work in the contracting rump of the Bermuda tourism economy and its satellite industries from those in the fast-track international financial services industries. The Haves are losing ground to the Have Lots at the sort of giddily accelerated rate normally only associated with Third World backwaters. This is a sure-fire recipe for dislocation, resentment and eventual retaliatory backlashes.

Yet Government prefers to turns a wilfully blind eye to this worsening situation. So, for that matter, do the island's new economic power brokers, preferring to view Bermuda as a large industrial park exclusively given over to their off-shore business activities rather than a small country with interests of its own: interests that do not always converge with those of its international clientele.

Given the average income of those employed in the off-shore sector is $125,000 per annum, two-and-half-times the Bermudian average, it's clear who has the insurmountable edge when it comes to dominating the island's resources. Take the housing market, which has been fiercely competitive since the 1970s. But in an era of executive rentals, million dollar-plus starter homes and those glorified, six-figure factory farm chicken hatcheries passed off as condominiums, affordable housing is now a luxury item. To have Bermudians sleeping in cars and caves was once an exception to this island's bourgeois norm; it's now becoming as unremarkable (and unremarked on) on in the supercharged and globalised Bermudian economy as a surging crime rate.

Adding to the strains caused by the lopsided wage differentials are the effects of Bermuda's tax system. The island boasts a tax rate of some 23 per cent but the hidden tax component is, of course, very much higher than that. Bermuda imports everything in order to survive: everything that's imported is taxed at a flat rate of 33 per cent. The tax, along with shipping and warehousing costs plus an inevitable profit margin, are passed along to consumers in terms of high prices. What's regressive and, frankly, penal about this antiquated taxation system is the fact the jet-setting premium baron with his eight- or nine-figure salary is taxed for his gallon of gas or basket of groceries or electricity usage at exactly the same rate as the average Bermudian on his $50,000-a-year income.

That Cabinet chooses not to address the impact of import tariffs on the increasingly overstrained Bermudian infrastructure was demonstrated in no uncertain terms when Trimingham's, Front Street's flagship department store, announced it was closing.

Cabinet steadfastly refused to acknowledge the cause-and-consequence factor at play here.

But anyone who can balance a chequebook could work out that a continuing decline in Trimingham's visitor-based market combined with penal income duties could only result in long-term disaster ? the Micawber Equation for unhappiness as applied to a tourism-dependent business.

HAT the Finance Minister could say, straight-faced, she was unaware of any linkage between the import-based tax system and Trimingham's closure suggests she is completely unqualified to hold her portfolio. Either that or, more likely, she now wears her disingenuousness as casually as a Prada suit. For the truth is talk of tax reform sends Arctic chills down the spines of those in Gucci Gulch's executive suites. Shouldering a fairer share of the Bermudian tax burden is not factored into any of their business plans. And the Government they openly boast of owning has been told this in the most direct terms imaginable.

Consequently there will be more retail-related closures in the coming years. More Bermudians unemployed. More Bermudians eking out existences on the margins of a society they no longer recognise as their own.

This march of events will force Government's hand at some stage. Tax reform will not alleviate all of the social problems Bermuda will encounter as it grows ever more economically dependent on the off-shore financial services sector. But it will allow for the vast majority of Bermudians to adapt more easily to their new economic environment. And to survive in it.

As things stand, the tax system is a structural weakness in the framework of Bermudian society, one that might collapse the entire edifice in much the same way reason can destroy political bafflebag - or a steel beam can bring down a house of cards.